{"id":917890,"date":"2022-01-20T07:37:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T07:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/news\/2022\/01\/20\/eff-now-pressing-anti-immigrant-button-in-bid-to-charm-voters-says-hsrc-researcher\/"},"modified":"2022-01-20T07:37:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T07:37:50","slug":"eff-now-pressing-anti-immigrant-button-in-bid-to-charm-voters-says-hsrc-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/20\/eff-now-pressing-anti-immigrant-button-in-bid-to-charm-voters-says-hsrc-researcher\/","title":{"rendered":"EFF now pressing anti-immigrant button in bid to charm voters, says HSRC researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pretoria \u2013 The much-publicised visits by Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema to restaurants to inspect the ratio of South African to immigrant workers employed is a campaign to drum up support which may fuel animosity and anti-immigrant sentiments, the Human Science Research Council\u2019s Dr Steven Gordon has said.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously the EFF\u2019s actions over the recent period show a party trying to push the anti-immigrant button despite their rhetoric to the contrary. This, I assume is an attempt to show up support within certain constituencies following a disappointing performance in the recent local government elections,\u201d Gordon told TV channel Newzroom Afrika.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

He said politicians should avoid sowing inter-group animosity to drive political support.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africa has a very long history in which politicians used divisive rhetoric around inter-group relations to obtain power, and that divisive and tragic history is still borne in the legacy of South Africa today,\u201d said Gordon, who is a public opinion scientist.<\/p>\n

He said debates about economic opportunity and immigration in South Africa should acknowledge that a significant minority in South Africa holds very strong anti-immigrant views and when activated, these views can cause violent anti-immigrant activity. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\n

There is a \u201czero-sum bias\u201d amongst certain South Africans who wrongly believe that if a foreign national gets an economic opportunity, it is lost to a local person, the senior researcher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis zero-sum thinking is very powerful in South Africa. The Human Science Research Council recently completed a substantial piece of research showing that one third of adult South Africans hold these zero-sum bias views in a high manner. They are highly predisposed to view economic opportunities as regards to foreign nationals in zero-sum way,\u201d said Gordon.<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomists will tell you that this is a very limited and frankly uninformed way to think about economic opportunity. Economic opportunity is not zero-sum.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

On Wednesday, Malema forced the owners of Kream restaurant at the Mall of Africa in Midrand, Johannesburg, to meet him and two other party MPs after they initially refused to do so.<\/p>\n

Malema and EFF spokesperson Vuyani Pambo met Kream manager Romon De Comarmond outside the establishment.<\/p>\n

Comarmond initially refused to meet the EFF delegation led by Malema, stating: \u201cNo, we are not going to meet with a delegation, Julius, I can\u2019t. I\u2019m going to speak to the management and I\u2019ll let you know.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Malema insisted that he had an appointment with Comarmond and Kream.<\/p>\n

\u201dThere is no appointment with me, you have not come with me with an appointment,\u201d Comarmond fired back.<\/p>\n

The EFF leadership in Tshwane has also been visiting restaurants, inspecting the employment ratio of South Africans to non-citizens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pretoria \u2013 The much-publicised visits by Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema to restaurants to inspect the ratio of South African to immigrant workers employed is a campaign to drum up support which may fuel animosity and anti-immigrant sentiments, the Human Science Research Council\u2019s Dr Steven Gordon has said. \u201cObviously the EFF\u2019s actions over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}