South African vigilante group Operation Dudula has become notorious for raiding businesses belonging to foreign nationals and forcing shops to close. BBC Africa Eye has gained rare access to members of the country’s most-prominent anti-migrant street movement.
Lived in southern Africa for 6 months. Primarily Mozambique but I was in SA a little as well as Malawi. They’re very racist, the Africans. My brother who was there as well was driving somewhere one day with a Mozambican, a good dude, and it came up that he wanted all the white people out of Mozambique. My brother is a red-headed white American. He questioned this Mozambican asking what about himself? “Oh, not you, we like you.” Its just how they think about things, probably going back to all the colonization that happened and all the ills or perceived ills that came from that. And so it’s easy to just keep going back to that idea as a society.
And for the record, they didn’t just want all the white people out. They wanted the Chinese out as well. And there’s tensions between the various tribes. Combine all that with low levels of education and extensive poverty and it’s easy for charismatic leaders to come along and pump up these ideas and get movements going as people see hope in the promises even when the results are obviously going to be bad.