The explosive xenophobic attacks in and around the city could be masking tensions between the province's local communities, warn field workers and experts.
As fury over unemployment and lack of service delivery and housing mounts, scape-goating could take on any guise, making economic migrants from the Eastern Cape particularly vulnerable.
Mlu Dywili, a community field worker in Delft, said: "Resources are badly lacking in the black communities of the Western Cape and when resources are few, conflict erupts as those whose needs are not met exert their power over those they deem powerless."
He said African immigrants had been an easy scapegoat for South Africans as they tried to make their way in a new country but that, "without them, people already settled in the Western Cape would be turning on those arriving from the Eastern Cape".
He said unemployment had laid the foundation of the tensions and that any sector of a community could become a scapegoat.
"Because of the divide and rule tactics of apartheid, there is the issue of who has the rights to the resources of a city," said Loren Landau, director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University.
He said the same conflict resolution mechanisms that had failed to prevent attacks on foreigners would fail to protect locals too.
"Where scarcity exists, conflict erupts along any cleavages and there is a deep worry that the current violence could expand into South Africans attacking each other too."
Patricia Dingane, a domestic worker who lives in Nyanga, also highlighted employment as the major issue. Dingane is an economic migrant from the Eastern Cape, one of the country's poorest provinces, who came to the Western Cape to work.
"Many of us who come from the Eastern Cape have a job already waiting for us. In that case, it's because a relative organised it for you before.
"But those who have been in the Western Cape for a long time get jealous if they haven't found work, even though they are also from the Eastern Cape from before. When I came here, I didn't get a warm welcome," she said.
Housing was also a major point of tension said community worker Nontembiso Madikane, adding that houses were allocated on a "first come, first served basis".
Refugees have become the focus of hatred, but as food and petrol prices rise, service delivery and housing crises show little sign of abating, and migrant communities flock into urban areas in search of work, that focus could shift.
Exactly a year ago, when the City of Cape Town formulated what it claimed to be a very progressive policy document on rights for refugees in the Cape, experts in the field of prejudice warned it wasn't enough, and some reasons they had cited were applicable to foreigners and South African economic migrants.
Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, director of the Cape Town-based Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, said, "Across the world, those who have experienced oppression tend to hate themselves or those who are standing in similar shoes."
The press office of the South African Institute of Race Relations said recent events "paint a very gloomy picture of our national psyche" and "South Africans have been taught to fight each other by our fathers and their fathers before them".
Another point raised by the institute was that of frustration building up as grievances were not heard, and how inappropriate outlets were then sought.
"Policy failures and lack of communication from the government have allowed these grievances to fester, but none of these frustrations can find an outlet when dealing with the highest bureaucracy in the world," the institute's press office said.
Instead, people turned on those who were "close at hand", "easy to blame", and "even easier to punish".
- Cape Argus
As fury over unemployment and lack of service delivery and housing mounts, scape-goating could take on any guise, making economic migrants from the Eastern Cape particularly vulnerable.
Mlu Dywili, a community field worker in Delft, said: "Resources are badly lacking in the black communities of the Western Cape and when resources are few, conflict erupts as those whose needs are not met exert their power over those they deem powerless."
He said African immigrants had been an easy scapegoat for South Africans as they tried to make their way in a new country but that, "without them, people already settled in the Western Cape would be turning on those arriving from the Eastern Cape".
He said unemployment had laid the foundation of the tensions and that any sector of a community could become a scapegoat.
"Because of the divide and rule tactics of apartheid, there is the issue of who has the rights to the resources of a city," said Loren Landau, director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University.
He said the same conflict resolution mechanisms that had failed to prevent attacks on foreigners would fail to protect locals too.
"Where scarcity exists, conflict erupts along any cleavages and there is a deep worry that the current violence could expand into South Africans attacking each other too."
Patricia Dingane, a domestic worker who lives in Nyanga, also highlighted employment as the major issue. Dingane is an economic migrant from the Eastern Cape, one of the country's poorest provinces, who came to the Western Cape to work.
"Many of us who come from the Eastern Cape have a job already waiting for us. In that case, it's because a relative organised it for you before.
"But those who have been in the Western Cape for a long time get jealous if they haven't found work, even though they are also from the Eastern Cape from before. When I came here, I didn't get a warm welcome," she said.
Housing was also a major point of tension said community worker Nontembiso Madikane, adding that houses were allocated on a "first come, first served basis".
Refugees have become the focus of hatred, but as food and petrol prices rise, service delivery and housing crises show little sign of abating, and migrant communities flock into urban areas in search of work, that focus could shift.
Exactly a year ago, when the City of Cape Town formulated what it claimed to be a very progressive policy document on rights for refugees in the Cape, experts in the field of prejudice warned it wasn't enough, and some reasons they had cited were applicable to foreigners and South African economic migrants.
Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, director of the Cape Town-based Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, said, "Across the world, those who have experienced oppression tend to hate themselves or those who are standing in similar shoes."
The press office of the South African Institute of Race Relations said recent events "paint a very gloomy picture of our national psyche" and "South Africans have been taught to fight each other by our fathers and their fathers before them".
Another point raised by the institute was that of frustration building up as grievances were not heard, and how inappropriate outlets were then sought.
"Policy failures and lack of communication from the government have allowed these grievances to fester, but none of these frustrations can find an outlet when dealing with the highest bureaucracy in the world," the institute's press office said.
Instead, people turned on those who were "close at hand", "easy to blame", and "even easier to punish".
- Cape Argus
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