NO good comes from reducing another person to less than human as is being done by ‘Operation Dudula’ in South Africa.

Social media is awash with news of Operation Dudula  trying to do away with some foreigners in South Africa.

Operation Dudula leader Nhlanhla Lux Dhlamini, at some point, was arrested and released on bail.

While the members claim they are not Afrophobic, Operation Dudula is targeting black foreign nationals, whether from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or elsewhere; targeting those living in rented houses and those surviving on  informal trading.

Undocumented immigrants, also called illegal aliens, who do not possess a valid visa or other immigration documentation or those who have stayed longer than permitted by temporary visas are the targets.

It is strange that those who are deemed not to belong are blacks and not whites.

What is the name of those who arrived in South Africa on ships to occupy lands they called free territories and, in turn, used the indigenous people as cheap labour?

Is it not that the marginalised South African community is trying to push away black immigrants in the hope that the few resources afforded blacks in their country will be for them and them only.

Who is a foreigner in South Africa?

Besides, are black foreigners responsible for lack of black spaces in black townships in South Africa?

Who runs the economy and who controls the wealth of South Africa?

The UN Human Rights Council Southern Africa regional representative, Abigail Noko, is on record commenting  during March 21 2022 National Human Rights Day commemoration that the scourge of racism persists today. 

“The challenges that emerged from that era still remain with us today. We see a lot of inequality in this country, we see a lot of challenges still with issues around race and racism. What is important is for  the youth to understand that they can build on that history. That there can be progress and if you look back to see where we have come today one can realise that there is a journey travelled and they can build on that experience to really address the current challenges (sic),” he said.

Hatred of fellow blacks will not improve the lot of South Africans.

The World Bank estimates South Africa is the world’s most unequal country.

A recent report by the World Bank indicates that more than two decades after South Africa ousted a racist apartheid regime that trapped the vast majority of South Africans in poverty, more than half the country still lives below the national poverty datum line and most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite.

“The country was very unequal in 1994 (at the end of apartheid) and now, 25 years later, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world,” says Victor Sulla, a senior economist for the World Bank in charge of Southern Africa. 

“There is no country that we have data about where the inequality is higher than South Africa.”

In light of these clear facts, anger and hatred of fellow blacks is misdirected.

Or the misdirection is deliberate and engineered by the very small elite benefitting from the country’s resources. 

Slave ships carried Africans across the Atlantic ocean, packed in inhuman conditions, on a journey that many did not survive and the perpetrators of that heinous crime claimed of superiority of arms and skin colour! 

This paper has previously reported that Sarah Baartman,  nicknamed Hottentot Venus, was shipped off to London and put on display to exhibit what the whites termed ‘sexual primitive and exceptional phenomenon of nature’ for a fee, attracting a higher charge for the elite to touch her or have sex with her, fueling the tendency to see the other as less human. 

While the leaders of Operation Dudula claim to be far from being Afrophobic, attacking blacks in the name of fixing the country and as a way of pushing out foreign nationals is barbaric.

Some of the places affected by Operation Dudula include Hillbrow in Johannesburg; Rosslyn industrial suburb of Akasia in Gauteng Province;  Benoni, a town in Ekurhuleni municipality in Gauteng Province; as well as streets of Diepkloof in Soweto. 

There were registered concerns  at the Zimbabwe Embassy in Pretoria. A statement issued beginning of this year read in part: “The Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe in the Republic of South Africa and its Consulates in Cape Town and Johannesburg have received reports of disturbing events that recently took place  and affected Zimbabwe nationals in parts of Johannesburg and Lephalale in the Limpopo Province. 

In these instances, nationals reportedly received threats […]”

The Operation Dudula group says they are very organised: Zandile Dabula, an Operation Dudula executive is on record for reporting to ENCA news as follows: “This organisation is a very peaceful and well organised organisation […] If there are any vigilante activities, it is probably people are taking chances using the name of Operation Dudula to do those criminal activities […]” 

South African Police Services’ Elias Mawela submitted that:

“There is no citizen who is empowered by any piece of legislation to go around and open people’s houses and open the shops and ask them whether they have documents or so….once people start to do that they are over-reacting and …taking the law into their own hands (sic).”

Whether there are correspondence aspects in the groups or not, there also has been the Alexandra Dudula Movement, which is said to have been formed in 2021 and also  targeting foreign nationals said to be undocumented.

‘Dudula’  is a South African Zulu word for ‘pushback’.

Afrophobia has been experienced in South Africa before and it is continuing; there is nothing rational or sane about the operation.

It is mostly directed at black  migrants  from elsewhere on the continent as opposed to Europeans or Americans.

In early 2007, in the Eastern Cape, resentment towards Somalis from locals for supposedly stealing trade and jobs led to rioting that killed over three dozen Somalis. Rioting in Zandspruit, Johannesburg, due to mere presence of illegal immigrants resulted in more than 100 informal Zimbabwean dwellings being burnt down.

In 2008, a wave of attacks across South Africa against foreigners killed as many as 60 and displaced many more.

The brains and funding behind Operation Dudula are an open secret. Some former Rhodies embittered by the land reform in  Zimbabwe have also been fingered.

And in many such scenarios in Africa, the hand of the former coloniser is always the one pulling the strings.

And the so-called ‘black-champions’ are nothing but puppets.