"Our country is a mess!" And it's caused by the influx of foreigners

"Oh dear!" (Walt hears the libtards cry!) "How dare you, how dare you, give space to senophobic, racist, white supremacist, yada yada yada propaganda? Except it's not. It's the honest opinion of a black woman, Zandile Dabula, who last June was elected President of Operation Dudula, a movement set up in South Africa two years ago to formalise what had been sporadic waves of vigilante attacks against foreigners dating back to shortly after blacks took power in 1994.

Ms Dabula is calm, charismatic and emphatic about the group's message: Foreigners are the root cause of South Africa's economic hardship.

When a reporter for the BBC (Britain's very woke state broadcaster) argues that this campaign is based solely on hate, she tells her: "We must be realistic here that most of the problems that we have are caused by the influx of foreign nationals. 

"Our country is a mess. Foreign nationals are working on a 20-year plan of taking over South Africa."

When challenged, she admits the "20-year plan" was a rumour but says she believes it is true. "You see drugs everywhere and most of the drug addicts are South African rather than foreign nationals. So, what's happening? Are they feeding our own brothers and sisters so that it can be easy for them to take over?"

Operation Dudula calls itself a civic movement, running on an anti-migrant platform. "Dudula" is a Zulu word meaning "to force out". With one in three South Africans out of work in one of the most unequal societies in the world, foreigners in general have become an easy target. The South African Social Attitudes Survey for 2021 found that almost half of the population of 60 million people believed there were between 17 and 40 million immigrants in the country.

Current polling suggests support for the Communist-backed African National Congress (ANC), the party once led by Nelson Mandela which has governed South Africa since 1994, could fall below 50% for the first time. Operation Dudula has ambitions to fill that vacuum and has now transformed itself from a local anti-migrant group into a national political party, stating its aims to contest next year's general election.

Operation Dudula's most pressing complaint is the huge influx of drugs into South Africa's most deprived communities. With drugs comes crime. South Africa's justice minister says that immigrants made up 8.5% of all convicted cases in 2019 and 7.1% in 2020. The figures are lower than those for the US of A, but, unlike Americans, South Africans intend to fight back, and they mean "fight" literally.

In Diepkloof, in eastern Soweto, the BBC joins a so-called Dudula taskforce. Men in trucks are going to confront a Mozambican shopkeeper who a South African landlady alleges has not paid his rent. A confrontation ensures, in which one of the men, Mandla Lenkosi, threatens to beat up the foreigner. 

When the BBC asks, the Dudula group maintain they are enforcing the law. Mr Lenkosi, also from Soweto and out of work, takes part in raids on migrant homes and workplaces, people who are suspected of anything from drug dealing to remaining in the country past their visa date.

"We grew up in apartheid times, where things were much better than what it is now," he says, pointing to the drug problems. "The law was the law [then]." 

His fellow Dudula supporter, Cedric Stone, agrees: "South Africa needs to go back to the old South Africa that we know. "Our fathers started the tuck shops but today all those tuck shops are all foreigners, especially, Bangladeshis, Somali and Ethiopians. Why?"

Ms Dabula says critics of Operation Dudula who maintain it is a collective of violent vigilantes are wrong. "We don't promote violence and we don't want people to feel harassed," but adds, "We cannot be overtaken by foreign nationals and do nothing about it." 

Hundreds of supporters travelled to attend Dudula's first national conference in Johannesburg in May, where members voted to register the group as a political party. Waving South African flags, dancing and singing their way through the streets to the City Hall, it felt like a celebration. However, the songs they sang carry a threatening... and plain... message: "Burn the foreigner. We will go to the garage, buy some petrol and burn the foreigner."

At the same gathering, Isaac Lesole, Operation Dudula's technical adviser, posed a question to the cheering supporters: "Do we make peace with illegal foreigners?" In union, they shouted back, "No!"

Précised from "Inside South Africa's Operation Dudula: 'Why we hate foreigners'", BBC News, 18/9/23.

Footnote: Americans are fed up to the teeth with the problems caused by "migrants" and "uncodumented aliens". But they would never take up arms to resist the invasion of their communitiees, would then. No, of course not.