Xenophobia & Racism

Xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people.[1] It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself.

Racism, by its simplest definition, is discrimination based on race. One with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their race (i.e., bigotry), or in the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits. Racism typically starts with, though is rarely confined to the assumption that there are taxonomic differences between different groups of people. Prejudices on other grounds would strictly categorize as discrimination to national or regional origin, religion, occupation, social status or some other distinction.

According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination.
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OK so the former is reactive and the latter proactive. The former understanable and the latter unforgivable.
SOuth africa, like the rest of the world, is racist. Completely and utterly, every single group hates every other group. Of course that's normal. It's like that everywhere on earth, it's US and THEM. South africa had the issue on the table, for everyone to see, that was bad. America pretends nothing is wrong and keeps neighbourhoods very carefully segregated, that's ok.
I guess to some degree apartheid covered up the tribal differences, by labelling black and white, simple. But even then, you had the "boere" (lit. farmers, referring to afrikaaners) or "dutchmen", and the souties, or rooinekke, ie english speakers)but they were all white, so it was ok.
You had zulus, shangaans, xhosa, sotho and a miriad other local tribes too, but they were all black, so it was ok. Nice big brushes to tar everyone the same.
Now we're all equal (well not really but we're pretending, ok) and small differences become more apparent. They're not black fighting apartheid anymore, they're zulu, or xhosa .... more than before. And now that they've beaten the enemy apartheid, like any people the world over they look for the next fight / threat.
Whites around here for some reason have ALWAYS fought. Although the pressure is starting to blur the lines between english and afrikaans. We're still a VERY fractured nation, whatever the bloody press thinks.
However, i think SA is lucky in having had all these things exposed, as the AVERAGE south africans, WHITE & BLACK, have been able to make peace, and the younger generation do not have the same feelings and prejudices, average people look deeper than skin, and black and white friends are now normal throughout all (ok most) layers of society (that i see).

Racism / xenophobia is normal. However killing people over it is not. That's the NEXT step. The reason it's got this bad, is it's been building a LONG time. Things getting worse, more foreigners, less land, higher costs for food, and materials.

The magic ingredient, is that the ANC govt has been encourtaging this for a while, this buildup. We have local school leavers who are waiting 3-4 years for an id document, without which they can do NOTHING. Immigrants take about 3 months, and they have documents, bank accounts, driving licenses and so on. I wish i were kidding, but this is the reality. Mbeki has worked hard to create a safe place in SA for all his northern friends. He has removed any and all border patrols, and we have apparently 3-4 millions immigrants in our country.

These are politically displaced people, who come with nothing except their talents, and try get a share of the small pie. In a country of 40 million (it was that a while ago) ... we're talking 10% of the poor are foreigners. And these foreigners come with drive and need and talents.

It was inevitable, but it will not go away, the ANC is still driving this stupidity.