Hon Speaker, indeed, xenophobia is a heinous crime that must not only be condemned, but fought wholeheartedly. It is a campaign to which all the people of South Africa must be committed. We must not make it the responsibility of the police only.
Of course, it is to be expected that the police will be unrelenting in their fight against any act of criminality that threatens life and property. However, our approach to fighting xenophobia must be premised on the mobilisation of the people of South Africa as a whole. That must go hand in hand with the harmonisation of immigration legislation across the continent and with the pursuit of economic development. It is necessary for this House to continuously focus on this crime, which, particularly in our country, has elements of Afrophobia and bears the entire set of race, class and gender dynamics of the system of racism.
All Members of Parliament must therefore commit themselves to the campaign and to mobilising their constituencies. That is precisely what the conference of immigration ministers, the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban was about. It was about, among other things, to ensure that the different African countries try, to the extent they can, to ensure that our immigration legislation across the continent is harmonised and that we all pay attention to managing international migration rather than regarding it as a nuisance we must combat. [Applause.]