SELF-FULFILLING prophecy is the catch phrase that’s being thrown around to explain this week’s attacks on foreigners.
Some are angry with those who have published warnings that plans were afoot to launch attacks on foreigners after the World Cup.
They believe that unsubstantiated rumours have been given oxygen, in turn inspiring acts of aggression against foreigners.
Those who have published such stories have defended themselves, pointing out how the media’s a failure to heed such warnings combined with a failure by government to act two years ago resulted in a blood bath.
The reality is that this debate takes us nowhere.
When a media institution starts to hear warnings of xenophobia from multiple sources over several weeks, it has a responsibility to air these and this has taken place.
Government and its security agencies, for all their denial that there is a problem, have reacted by moving troops and police into areas where there is the danger of violence.
Both have done the right thing and we should all pray that, this time around, the damage has been limited.
What is more concerning is the lingering discontent with foreigners that continues to haunt poorer communities.
While the country was celebrating the World Cup, many of these people were scrabbling for a living on the margins of society.
They are trying to survive and they see competition for jobs and resources by foreigners as a deadly threat.
What lies beneath this troubled state of mind is troubled policy.
South Africa is yet to decide whether it desires the skills and entrepreneurial zeal of foreigners or not.
Our policy appears to be to turn a blind eye to illegal foreigners, but to simultaneously place obstacles in the way of these people attaining some sort of formal status in the society.
They continue to live here, but they find themselves the victims of bribery and discrimination at every turn.
The message to those who see them as competition is that the state does not value them, sending a dangerous signal that a blind eye will be turned to discrimination.
Has one person been successfully prosecuted for the horrific killing of over 60 foreigners two years ago?
If such trials and arrests have taken place, they have been kept very much out of the public eye.
What the country needed to see was a state that would not tolerate discrimination arresting, trying and convicting the perpetrators of these murders.
Such formal action by the public authorities backed up by a consistent appeal by leaders for the acceptance of foreigners would go a long way to isolating those who are stoking the fires of xenophobia.
Instead we have a legacy of administrative inaction, of a criminal justice system which is indifferent to the lives of foreigners and, finally, a population of desperate people who believe they can act with impunity provided the victims are foreign.
Government must provide leadership by treating each and every assault on a foreigner with the same vigour as other crimes. We must isolate the haters.

Related posts:

1. Why we must make foreigners equal citizens
2. Xenophobic violence is back – be afraid
3. Time for Zuma to spell out some real plans
4. Exposed: The real reason Mbeki met with Mugabe and Tsvangirai
5. Xenophobia: Are we fuelling a second round of attacks?