No. 22: Immigration, Xenophobia and Human Rights in South Africa

In 2000, the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) entered into a partnership with the Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign of the South African Human Rights Commission. The two cooperated in offering a series of country-wide training workshops for media and journalists at which the results of SAMP research into media xenophobia was presented and discussed. This publication is the second product of that partnership. The paper sets out to critically review and examine the evidence for the argument that xenophobia is widespread and growing in South Africa. While it is important to document the scale of the problem and the enormity of the public education challenge that confronts government and civil society, there are no grounds for defeatism. Rather this publication is designed to draw attention to a problem that requires attention and a commitment from all South Africans to roll back and defeat the new apartheid of xenophobia. We would like to particularly thank all of the researchers and organizations involved in the surveys on which this publication is based. This paper was written by Jonathan Crush. An earlier version was published in International Migration 38 (2000)