After a 12-hour day of driving for Uber, Diouf* pulls down a dimly lit street into the gravel driveway of his two-bedroom Langa home. Positioned eight miles outside Cape Town, Langa is South Africa’s oldest township, boasting a population of 200,000 people. Known for its friendly residents and tight-knit community, Langa attracts a steady stream of tourists looking for a dose of “traditional culture” in the form of organized bike tours or a meal at Mzansi, Cape Town’s highest rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. Well aware of Langa’s friendly reputation, Diouf, a 29-year-old asylum seeker from Senegal, moved to the township in 2008 after repeatedly facing discrimination and violence in Durban over his foreign-born status.

Eager to see his wife and son, Diouf stepped out of his white Ford sedan expecting a hot meal in his immediate future. Instead, he got a knife lodged in his shoulder. Four men started beating Diouf, demanding money. Diouf’s brother John* saw the mugging from inside and rushed out to stop the men but received a gunshot wound to the leg. This wasn’t the first time Diouf and his brother had been attacked, and he doubts it will be the last. “I am so scared that they will be back and kill my entire family,” he told me. “I’m not sure if my son will grow up.”

Before I met Diouf, the only side of Langa I knew came from spending time with Thandile Gamanda, a 24-year-old Langa native. Prior to the colonial and Apartheid regimes, ethnic kingdoms ruled South Africa, one of those being the Xhosa people, the most prominent group in the Cape Town area. Thandile has roots in the powerful Gaba clan, affording him respect and trust among those in the community. When someone robbed one of his friends, he asked around and found out the name of the perpetrator. He asked him to return what he’d stolen, and the man did. It’s hard to walk more than a block with Thandile without running into someone who knows him. And while Thandile carries an added level of respect as prince, those with Xhosa heritage living in Langa also benefit from the closeness of the community. 24-year-old Thami Qubeka, a close friend of Thandile’s, also grew up in Langa and moves with ease through the neighborhood his family has always called home. “It’s a very tight-knit community. A lot of people know each other,” he said.

Last spring, I lived in Langa for three weeks during a three-month stay in South Africa studying multiculturalism and human rights. Originally there just to experience the township culture, I returned toward the end of my stay in the Rainbow Nation to learn about the experiences of African refugees and asylum seekers. As a White American who grew up in the Chicago suburbs before attending a private East Coast institution, I never made much of a connection between my country’s colonial past and the issues it faces today. Even after spending months in South Africa, a country that did not achieve true independence till the fall of Apartheid in 1994, I struggled to fully grasp the true extent to which European colonialism impacted all aspects of the country. Meeting Diouf and some of Langa’s other asylum seekers gave me the clarity that I might have never found otherwise. And with COVID-19 restrictions leading to police brutality and diminished access to healthcare, government services, and basic necessities, I knew international attention needed to be brought toward South Africa’s refugee crisis.

Since the fall of Apartheid, South Africa has experienced a series of violent outbreaks against foreigners. Most recently, 11 people died during a September riot in Johannesburg targeted at Somali-owned businesses. Not long before that, attacks in Durban led to the displacement of roughly 100 Malawi immigrants. And similar attacks occurred just about every year dating back to 1995. One thing remains consistent about the attacks—they occur in townships and they always target Black Africans, leading to scholars diagnosing the problem as “Afrophobia.” “There is a particular other and it’s an African other,” Rothney Tshaka an expert on the phenomenon and professor of theology and ethics at the University of South Africa said. “It’s almost never White immigrants.” With discrimination in the United States correlating with skin tone and economic circumstance, it shocked me that some of South Africa’s most violent anti-immigrant sentiments happened between Black South Africans and Black foreigners who lived as neighbors in the townships. But the narrative isn’t that simple. And like most issues in the country, the roots of the problem lie in colonialism and Apartheid. “There is a degree of entitlement,” Tshaka said. “By virtue of being South African, you’re supposed to have certain things.”

Back in Langa while walking down the paved and sometimes gravel streets with Thandile and Thami, I met Thandile’s cousin Vuyani Gamanda. Walking with Thandile through Langa was like walking with Tom Hanks; just being with him helped people warm up to me. So, in a manner of minutes I found myself in a deep conversation with Vuyani about the disappointment of post-Apartheid South Africa. “They promised us a better life,” he said. “But we’re not having a better life. We’re still living in fucking shacks. Imagine me, 20 years old, living in a shack. I’m done with school. I have my varsity marks, but they didn’t take me at university. How the fuck am I supposed to live with no job?” The current unemployment rate in South Africa stands at almost 30%. Among those 15-24, that rate stands at 53%. And 58.5% of White and 51% of Asian individuals enter some form of higher education as opposed to only 14.3% of mixed-race individuals and 12% of Black individuals. “We are living under a constitution that is bullshit,” Vuyani said. “Violence solves no problems, except in South Africa it does.”

In the 21 years following the presidency of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC) made several promises which remain unrealized, including job creation programs, rollout of a national health insurance fund, and connecting 1.6 million homes to the electricity grid. These unrealized promises fuel the frustration of citizens who expected the end of Apartheid would bring a better life. “Those people who participated in the struggle of liberation are despondent that the project their parents engaged in did not bring the desired fruits for them,” Tshaka said. For some, seeing foreign nationals employed in ride sharing and hospitality jobs reflects not only workplace competition but a hindrance to the political act of refusing to work hourly wage jobs until the government delivers on its promise to create salary-based, skilled labor.

When I sat down with John and Diouf, they told me the political frustrations around the job market make life difficult for them as hourly wage-earning ride sharing drivers. “As citizens, they believe that maybe the government should give them jobs,” John said. “They don’t want to do Uber or serve.” John, who was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after Diouf and their parents fled Senegal, left a country in a state of violence, dealing with a 20-year armed conflict between rival groups vying for territory. Escaping to South Africa gave John a chance to live in peace. He came to South Africa just wanting a source of income. “For us as foreigners we want to survive,” he said. “So, someone living to survive will do anything.” Though John has been stabbed and robbed more than five times, driving Uber affords him the opportunity to buy things others in the township cannot afford. And though many South Africans would prefer not to drive Uber, the contempt aimed at foreign-born service providers grows as migrants fill these positions. And with the culture around protesting and civil disobedience prominent in South Africa, roughly one in three adults have a criminal record, furthering the barriers around employment. “Normally, like Uber, they don’t employ someone with a criminal record,” Diouf said. “Foreigners don’t have these kinds of criminal records, so whenever they apply to jobs, hiring managers employ them.” Sharon Ekambaram, the program manager of the refugee and migrant rights department of Lawyers for Human Rights, sees the Afrophobic rhetoric around employment as a way for the government to deflect attention from its own failings.

“The only way you can get people to vote is to blame the foreign nationals for all our problems, to blame foreign nationals for taking our jobs, to blame foreign nationals for the crime,” she said. “I think the logic of that argument is they have to provide evidence that they are clamping down on foreign nationals to appease South Africans.” In his speech at the ANC’s election manifesto for the 2019 election, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised to crack down on undocumented immigrants, saying, “Everyone just arrives in our townships and rural areas and sets up businesses without licenses and permits. We are going to bring this to an end.” Ramaphosa’s critics said these comments fueled the subsequent Afrophobic attacks in Durban. Other political officials have been even more outright in their anti-immigration rhetoric. Home Affairs Minister and former Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi accused foreigners of overcrowding the country’s public hospitals. And Premier of the Gauteng province David Makhura has said specific nationalities, Nigerians in particular, are responsible for drug crimes, violent crimes, and murders in the country. Data suggests foreigners account for roughly 4% of South Africa’s population. Nonetheless, immigration issues remained a major talking point during the past election. “We have seen in these elections for the first time in our history of democracy, which is 25 years, where migration was used as a political tool and scapegoating to win votes,” Ekambaram said.

Diouf experienced governmental barriers toward receiving full refugee status when trying to renew his asylum seeker pass. Before earning full refugee status, applicants hold a temporary asylum seeker permit while they await official approval from a Refugee Reception Office. Prior to becoming a full refugee, asylum seekers cannot earn degrees or receive a driver’s license. They are also generally unable to open bank accounts and are restricted in their employment opportunities and ability to receive public healthcare. In theory, these rights should not be restricted for very long, as individuals are supposed to only live under asylum seeker status while their case for refugee status— a crucial step toward citizenship—is being approved. However, according to Ekambaram, some wait up to 15 years before receiving refugee status. And even renewing asylum seeker status can be incredibly difficult. “Sometimes they give me three months (asylum seeker status). Sometimes they give me six months,” Diouf said. “So, I keep going to extend it.” To renew his permit, Diouf must travel from Langa to Durban. The drive to Durban takes 16 to 18 hours; the bus ride takes more than a day, often including an overnight stop; and the train ride generally takes two days. “They are trying to make our lives so difficult,” Diouf said. He has been renewing his status, as his case to become a refugee remains pending, for over 12 years.

Not far from Diouf’s house, I met Joseph*, an Angolan asylum seeker and owner of a cellphone repair shop. He’s been waiting for full refugee status for over eight years. “Being a foreigner here is very very difficult,” he said. One time while walking alone three men, who just by looking could tell Joseph was a foreigner, approached him and demanded everything he was carrying. When Joseph resisted, the three men attacked him, stabbing him multiple times before taking his phone and money. When he went to the police, officers responded, “Why don’t you guys go back to your country?” “They don’t have the energy to help when it comes to foreigners,” Joseph said. This is not the first time the police failed to help him. One time he left his house window open and people stole his clothes, TV, and laptop. The police took down a report but never came back. “There’s no foreigner in this country that still wants to live here,” Joseph told me. “(Except) guys from Europe or America.”

In a country that’s 80% Black and only 10% White, the top 10%, comprised largely of Whites, control 70% of the nation’s assets, while the bottom 60%, comprised largely of Blacks, control just 13% of the nation’s wealth, according to a report by the World Bank. This report ranked South Africa as the world’s most unequal country. During the colonial era before Apartheid, the 1913 Native Land Act designated only 13% of the country’s land to Black South Africans, leaving most of the rest for White South Africans, leading to Black families being forcibly removed from their homes and stripped of their property. And though today South Africa’s constitution features a Land Reform Act that helps people of color reacquire stolen land, Whites still own 72% of the nation’s farmland, according to a 2017 government audit. As an academic speaker I met put it, “After Apartheid, the Whites handed over the crown but kept the jewels.” (Quite literally—the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II owns the Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond ever found, which happened to be mined from South Africa. It remains at the front of her crown and atop her royal scepter.)

Tshaka cites the failing of post-Apartheid wealth distribution as a major source of the country’s Afrophobia. “That phobia is misplaced when dealing with a nervous condition that is brought not by the African foreigner, but by an economic system that has allowed for a division between the rich and very poor,” he said. “Instead of focusing on that problem, it is easier to blame those in sight.” While Black foreigners living in townships are seen as competitors, Tshaka says White foreigners are seen by some as job creators and investors This perception, combined with the fact that Black South Africans generally live closer to Black foreigners than White South Africans, leads to the misconception that White South Africans support foreign nationals. In our conversations, Diouf seemed to believe some of this perception. “White South Africans, they don’t hate foreigners, they love foreigners, they assist foreigners,” he said. “Some of them are studying from support of White people.” Despite this narrative, a study by The Southern African Migration Project found Whites to be more xenophobic than Blacks. Diouf cleared up why the perception for many may seem to contradict the study: “They love (foreigners) because (foreigners) love work. They know we are not lazy.” And with asylum seeker permits limiting work opportunities, employers know people like Diouf will take on more work for less pay.

While the fight for true equality in South Africa remains an uphill battle for foreigners and Black South Africans alike, walking with Thandile and Thami, I see an air of optimism regarding the future. During our walk, we stop at the home of Khanyo Bavuma. Though he’d never met me, Khanyo welcomes me into his room, and we start talking about life in the Rainbow Nation and its potential future. For 23-year-old Khanyo, the foreign nationals reflect potential opportunity rather than threats to prosperity. “Our Somali brothers have township shops across the country. They’ve come with a goal in mind and they’re thriving off that. That’s genius what they did there,” he said. “I find them to be opportunistic, go-getters working as a unit.” A Langa native, Khanyo sees his tight-knit community as a place for opportunity, a place where people can grow together. “There’s a reason I was born in these conditions, and it’s up to me that I get where I want to be,” he told me. “We cannot be using that as a scapegoat every time.” Right now, Khanyo educates himself on coding languages online, looking to take advantage of the ever-growing tech industry.

Having accompanied me through my conversations in Langa, Thami tells me hearing about these issues from his friends and speaking with the asylum seekers gave him a new perception of the community. “I find out a lot of people have ambitions beyond what they have now,” he said. “It gave me a certain level of added respect.” While life in the townships can be difficult, Thami sees optimism in the future as more members of the community accumulate wealth and the government works to right the wrongs of the country’s difficult past. But he understands for many the path toward equality remains a long journey, with barriers that for some will prove insurmountable. “A lot of people don’t understand if you’re from the township your dreams are limited by what you know,” he told me. “There are kids who will have huge dreams that would surprise a lot of people.” Diouf’s dream is for a future where the world decides to listen to the voices of its asylum seekers. “No one will speak for us,” he said. “You can reach where we can’t reach. You can go where we can’t go. That’s all I can ask for.”

* Diouf, John, and Joseph’s real names were kept confidential out of concern for their safety and fear of potential backlash.

The Lingering Effects of Apartheid Make Life Hell for South Africa’s Asylum Seekers