Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of immigrants have crossed legally and illegally into South Africa over the past six years to share in the promise of a new and vibrant South Africa. About 60,000 people have applied for refugee status. Estimates of undocumented immigrants in South Africa range from about 1.5 million to 8 million - a staggering figure in a country of only 45 million. Now, six years later, both immigrants and residents are sorely disappointed. In the new South Africa, beggars still hold out their palms at Johannesburg stoplights.
Hospitals still have no money for new bed sheets, much less high-tech equipment.
Black pupils still practice their penmanship in the dirt under shade trees, not in notebooks. Xenophobia announced its arrival in South Africa in September 1998, when an angry mob killed three foreigners on a commuter train outside Pretoria - on the pretext that they had stolen jobs from South Africans. While many were surprised by the ferocity of the killings, few were surprised by the sentiments behind it. This is one of the few issues in which all segments of South African society are unified, said Mengesha Kebede, the UN High Commission for Refugees representative for Southern Africa. Black, white, they all oppose immigrants.