Scapegoating: xenophobia in South Africa

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means a half day. Yeah, give it a try@mintmobile.com switch.

Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only.

Speed slow.

135 gigabytes of network busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In America, the debate over abortion is becoming even more polarized as conservative states pass more restrictive legislation. Liberal ones are making late term abortions easier. And the President is weighing in to compound the division. And it can be really tricky to get a taxi in Beirut unless you know how the decades old system of signaling, haggling and ride sharing works. And it's exactly this complexity that keeps upstart taxi firms such as Uber from taking. But first, Over the past week, a wave of xenophobic violence has swept through South Africa. Gangs wielding sticks advanced through the streets of central Johannesburg. Their chants in Zulu rang clear. Foreigners must go back to where they came from. And yesterday, amid the unrest, Nigeria pledged to repatriate over 600 of its citizens over concerns for their safety. A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque and shops have been burned and looted. Twelve people have been killed in the attacks, which have mostly been carried out by South Africans targeting migrants from other African countries. It's not the first time South Africa has experienced such horrors. In 2008 and 2015, dozens of people were killed in riots against foreigners.

Riot vans, armed police burning barricades, and angry mobs on the township streets.

If I can see a foreigner here.

I'm sure I'll kill a foreigner.

Show me that. What you got in your hand?

We'll kill them.

What are you going to do with them?

Yeah, I'm going to stab him in the face.

As one of the continent's biggest and most developed economies, South Africa attracts migrants from across Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa called for an end to the attacks in an address to the nation.

As I speak to you, the debris of several days of violence and looting continues to litter many of the streets of our country. There can be no excuse for the attacks on the homes and businesses of foreign nationals.

It's no coincidence that the violence comes during a prolonged slump in South Africa's economy. Migrants have become a convenient scapegoat.

The attack started about two weeks ago. We saw South African truck drivers launch a nationwide strike against the employment of foreign drivers.

Erin Conway Smith is Southern Africa correspondent for the Economist, based in Johannesburg.

And as part of that, they staged road blockades and were setting foreign driven vehicles on fire. And around the same time, we saw marches happening in Johannesburg and Pretoria. These were about supposed drug dealing that was being blamed on foreign migrants, but pretty quickly devolved into attacks on foreign owned businesses, many of which were looted and set on fire.

And you've seen this kind of outbreak of violence before in South Africa?

We have seen this sort of violence before. The worst of it was in 2008 when there were 62 people killed and tens of thousands displaced. At the time, leaders in the country said that we shouldn't ever allow such a thing to happen again. But it has repeatedly since. There was another bout of anti foreigner violence in 2015 and then recently.

And what is it that causes these sort of flare ups the outbreak of violence against foreigners?

There's a lot of frustration in South Africa with the poor economy and the lack of jobs. I mean, the economy is basically not growing in the doldrums and there are a lot of people out of work. Unofficial unemployment at 29%, although it's higher when you consider people who have simply given up looking for jobs because there are none to be found, and higher still among youth. Around 50% of young people in South Africa are out of work. So you have a lot of people with time on their hands and are frustrated because they don't have an income. At the same time, what's not helping it is comments that you hear even from quite senior politicians blaming foreigners for problems in South African society, things like crime or. We saw the previous health minister blaming overcrowded hospitals on foreigners.

And so primarily the migrants that are being targeted here are from other African countries. I mean, that must create something of a diplomatic concern in a fairly tight knit economic community.

Yeah, absolutely. The foreigners we're talking about are migrants from other African countries who come to South Africa because it's the most developed economy on the continent. There's opportunities here. Some come because they're fleeing oppression, violence back home, but then they get here and are subject to attacks. So, yes, you do have other African countries that are very upset at the moment. In South Africa, Nigeria has arranged to evacuate 600 citizens who are affected by the violence and are bringing planes in to fly them out. At the same time, you have protests happening outside South African companies and embassies in different African countries. And I think because this has been happening repeatedly in South Africa, there is mounting anger and frustration that nothing's being done to stop it.

So when you say nothing's being done to stop it, you mean that the South African leadership at the moment is just standing by and watching this well up.

You do see political leaders now trying to say the right things. We had the president, Cyril Marmaphosa, address the nation last week in an attempt to calm things down. He was calling for an end to the violence. But really, you also still see police and people in government explaining away the violence as mere criminality or lawlessness, rather than describing it as xenophobic, as attacks on foreigners.

And so in a sense, the foreign migrants then are a kind of convenient scapegoat, both for the out of work and disaffected and the politicians who would otherwise perhaps themselves be.

Yeah, that's right. And a lot of the violence that happens happens with a certain degree of impunity. Relatively few people are held to account for the kind of things that happen.

And so if all of this ultimately has economic roots, what could be done? What systemic changes could be undertaken to stop this from flaring up again?

That's something the government's been trying to do. Stimulate the economy, create jobs, get people working. But it's proved very tough. Earlier this year, the government announced an action plan that was to deal with discrimination and xenophobia. This included things such as educating the public and the police. But I think one thing that needs to be remembered, and it's being brought up. Ramaphosa, when he was addressing South Africans in an attempt to stop the violence, reminded people that during the years of apartheid, it was neighboring countries who provided sanctuary and help and were really there for black South Africans. And the role that other African countries played during those difficult years shouldn't be forgotten.

Erin, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Abortion is a rape. Fight, fight, fight.

America's abortion war is becoming ever more polarized. This year, the two sides have driven each other further and further apart.

What happened today was the legalized killing of viable freemi babies in uterus.

You guys keep your legs closed.

If you don't want to have a.

Baby, keep that thing out.

There is a war against women, a war on bodily autonomy.

In the first seven months of this year, 16 states passed or introduced early abortion bans. Socially liberal states have pushed back. Several have made it easier to have an abortion later in pregnancy.

Illinois knows where we stand and we're going to be here. For women, if they have to be refugees from other states, late term abortion.

Is rare but controversial, and President Donald Trump has seized upon it as a campaign issue.

Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother's womb moments from birth. These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and their dreams with the world.

Late term abortion isn't actually a medical term, so its meaning is somewhat subjective and varies a bit from country to country.

Meehan Ridge is our US News editor.

In America, it's broadly regarded as an abortion that happens in the second half of pregnancy, maybe from the 2020 first week onward. It doesn't bear any resemblance really to Donald Trump's description. The foetus isn't ripped from the mother's womb. The process, which takes place over three to four days, typically involves the foetus being euthanised by an injection at the very beginning of the process in the heart or the amniotic sac, and then after that the woman is induced. So the actual extraction of the foetus is much more like a stillbirth, like a natural labour, than the sort of violent caesarean scenario that Mr. Trump seems to be suggesting.

And so why are abortions needed at that late stage?

All sorts of reasons. Late abortions are very rare in America. Much less than 2% of all abortions are estimated to take place after the 21st week. So there's not very much data on why women have abortions. But research suggests that abortions late in pregnancy happen for the same reason as they do earlier. Sometimes a woman finds that the foetus has an anomaly, a serious condition or a disability. Sometimes women can't find the funding for an abortion because in America, federal funding is generally not allowed to be used for abortion. So if they can't access the right sort of services provided by a non profit, an earlier abortion might be delayed. And that might be another reason why women have abortions later.

And why do you think it is that this topic of late term abortion has become such a lightning rod for Mr. Trump?

So abortion's been a potent issue for Republican politicians for a long time, but for Mr. Trump, it's particularly important. He was largely elected because of the support of the sort of evangelical Christians who regard abortion as the the single most voting issue when they go to the polls. And late term abortions obviously provide the most sort of grisly and dramatic rhetoric and publicity, even though some of that is inaccurate. But the power of anti abortion rhetoric extends beyond that constituency, because whereas a majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal, that Roe should stand. Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that in 1973 said abortion was legal up until the 23rd or the 24th week of pregnancy, later on in pregnancy, most Americans are very uncomfortable about it. Polls suggest that only 13% think it should be generally legal in the third trimester.

So it's clear most Americans are in favor of abortions being legal, at least early on. But the legislation we're seeing this year is much more restrictive even than that. Why do you suppose that is?

So the abortion bans that have been passed in more than a dozen states this year have got very little to do with public opinion. The heartbeat bills, as they're called, which ban abortion from around the sixth week of pregnancy, are designed with a specific goal in mind, and that is to get Roe v. Wade overturned. The hope is that because these laws are unconstitutional, they're being struck down. And the hope is that one of these laws will, because of the legal battles that are attached to them, make its way to the Supreme Court, where the new conservative majority of justices will use it to overturn Roe versus Wade.

But there's also this countervailing trend where some more liberal states have been, in fact, loosening their restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy.

Yes, and that is a legislative backlash to all the heartbeat bills. So more liberal, socially liberal states are protecting and preserving and upholding their abortion laws in the event that Roe is overturned. But they're also, and this is probably almost as important for them, they're sending a message. They're saying, we stand for women's reproductive rights.

And why do you think it is that the issue of abortion has become so very polarized in America?

It's partly a very potent issue because America is still a very Christian country, although that's changing. But by far the bigger reason is the way that abortion was legalised. So in other countries, including European countries, laws were passed by Parliament, or, as in the case of Ireland, most recently in referendums. So although there was a lot of strong feeling about abortion, there was also a general feeling that it was passed by majority consent. In America, the situation is very different. Abortion was legalised by seven justices voting against two justices to declare it a constitutional right. So that was always going to cause problems.

And does that legal background affect how easy it is to actually access abortion in America compared with other countries?

Theoretically, America's framework is more liberal than many other countries. For example, of the 59 countries that allow abortion on demand, America is only one of seven that allow it after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Roe vs. Wade allows it until about the 24th week. But in actual fact, abortion access is very limited often because since Roe was passed, lawmakers in conservative states have passed a lot of state level restrictions to make it more difficult for women to access abortion. That has resulted in clinics closing down and services being much reduced. Often these restrictions didn't get a lot of press coverage when they were passed. One law which has been repeated in several states, for example, is to say exactly the width of a corridor in an abortion clinic and what it should be. That doesn't sound like very much, but when you add these restrictions all together, it can make it very difficult and expensive for clinics to keep operating. Taken as a whole, their accumulative effect has been quite devastating. There are now seven states in America that only have one abortion clinic left.

And what kind of impacts have those restrictions had?

These abortion restrictions may perversely have the opposite effect to what was intended. They may make it more difficult for women to have earlier abortions, which pushes them to have late abortions. There's not very much data on this, but there has been some research suggesting that in Texas, where there was a very restrictive law passed in 2013, in the year that followed, this research suggests there was an increase in the number of second trimester abortions the following year.

So this abortion war seems to be becoming more and more polarized. The argument's more and more pointed. Where does this end? Where do you see this going? And in particular, do you think that Roe v. Wade will be credibly challenged?

It's quite likely it will be challenged in the Supreme Court, and it's quite possible that that will lead to Roe versus Wade being overturned. But it is a long held precedent. Several of the conservative justices have expressed their dislike of abortion and of the thinking that led to the ruling that allowed it. But it's far from clear they'd overturn it in a hurry. And I think we can certainly say it won't be overturned before the election because the Chief justice in particular is anxious for the Court to be seen as non partisan, and this would be seen as a very partisan ruling. In the long term, it seems very likely that America's abortion war will rage on and on. For it to end, there'd have to be some sort of political compromise, but it's extremely difficult to imagine that happening anytime soon.

Me and thank you very much for Joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

To outsiders, Beirut's taxi hailing rituals can seem baffling. Hesitate a moment to too long and your driver can speed off, leaving you breathing exhaust fumes and wondering what went wrong. Beneath this brusque treatment, there's a complicated set of norms and customs that go back decades. The service system, as it's known, became the go to method of public transport in Beirut after the civil war devastated all the others. So for locals, they're used to it.

So you walk out onto the streets and you wait for a taxi to come come along, and you know them from the red license plate.

Alex Jodish has been reporting from Beirut for the Economist.

The driver will typically honk at you, will kind of slow down and lean out of his dough. You'll shout the name of your destination to him. And if he agrees, he'll just sort of wave you in and take you straight there. The expectation is 2,000 pounds, which is about $1.33. You don't have to specify that. You don't have to spell it out. If the driver thinks that traffic is going to be bad or that maybe he's not going to get any other fares along the way, he might ask for servicing the double service, which is 4,000, or, you know, have you buy out all the taxi for 10,000, or he might just decline and kind of move along. So it's up to the driver whether he feels like taking you or not based on all of these calculations that he's making on a very split second kind of level. And so if you don't agree with the proposal that he gives in response, then you can just sort of refuse and wait for another driver to come along and offer to take you on your terms. So you have a little bit of flexibility as well. But typically, if you can make that deal, you're going to get a much, much better price than you would with Uber or anything like that.

So in a lot of cities in the world, there is this concern that Uber will essentially eat up the local taxi market. You don't think that's a risk in Beirut?

Well, there's definitely a lot more drivers using Uber. But what's kind of unique about the service system is that there can be this kind of coexistence between them, not just in the city, but among even individual drivers themselves. Arrangement that you'll find that's very common is somebody who owns a taxi who has a red license plate will kind of toggle between the two systems whenever they feel like it works in their interest. There's also a lot of drivers who prefer to just use the service system and don't use Uber at all because they are afraid that the software will penalize them for turning down rides or will strand them in these very high density, high traffic routes. And they think that if, if they just run the routes they know at the times that they know it, they can make a bunch more money. I mean, one driver told me he made something like 30% more running service routes than he thought he could get with Uber. I mean, you see this coexistence between the two systems that can't really work in more formalized systems.

So it seems like the motivations of the drivers are clear. But what about the residents? Wouldn't they rather a simpler system?

Definitely, a sort of stable, affordable, predictable public transport system would be preferable, but that just doesn't exist in Beirut, largely as a consequence of the civil war. Also, that said, if you know the system and you know how to work it, and you know what the expectations are, the service system can actually be pretty convenient and you're almost definitely going to get a lower price than you do with Uber.

Alex, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.