The impact of xenophobia and xenophobic violence on South Africa’s developmental partnership agenda

The African agenda and regional integration form the core of South Africa’s development partnership agenda. The wave of xenophobic violence that broke out in parts of South Africa in April 2015 has once again brought into sharp relief the daunting reality of xenophobia and its lingering undercurrents in the South African society. The conflation of xenophobia with Afrophobia renders an interrogation of Africa as the essence of South Africa’s developmental focus. This paper argues that xenophobic violence is both detrimental and contrary to the central tenets of South Africa’s development agenda and its diplomacy of Ubuntu . A series of shortterm and long-term policy recommendations are then put forward.