CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
- 1.1 Background of the study
Xenophobia is not a new phenomenon in the world. From a global perspective, In 1750 America during the period of rule of Ben Franklin was worried that a large number of foreigners will fill up their country. The foreigners at that time were Germans. The United States of America still is a nation populated with immigrants which infused xenophobia for those immigrants. A great number of Americans still in the 21st Century worry that immigrants like Mexicans are taking their jobs so there is a lot of xenophobic attitudes towards Mexicans by some Americans. An example was Donald Trump the former President of America wanting to ban immigrants and create a wall between America and them claiming that immigrants like Mexicans were drug dealers and rapists while immigrants from countries like Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan were terrorists.
So, xenophobia is not a new phenomenon in the world as we have been dealing with it for centuries, especially in Africa as there has been evidence of xenophobic practices in African countries such as Nigeria on Ghanaians during the year 1983 where Shehu Shagari expelled Ghanaians from Nigeria as he claimed there were only there to exploit the money in the country. However, it is most prevalent in South Africa, which has been known to have the most xenophobic violent attacks on other African states. In the 20th century in 1994, 1995, 1997 South Africa practiced xenophobia on fellow African countries immigrants like the Congolese by denying them access to healthcare facilities. Meanwhile, in Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique immigrants were physically assaulted for weeks in January 1995 by armed gangs who identified them and marched them to
police stations to purify the town of foreigners (Human rights watch 1998). A survey was conducted in 2001 by the South African Migration Project (SAMP) where 21 percentages of South Africans wanted a complete ban on foreigners while 64 percentages wanted strict limitations on the number of people allowed into the country.