South Africa has been burning for almost two weeks now.

So yes, economically-driven anti-immigration nativism goes full-throttle with pumping adrenaline, and South Africa STILL plans to handle the 2010 World Cup.

Everybody’s condemning the violence, everybody’s shocked at the picture of a Mozambican man being immolated on the street with the covering of his own flame-saturated blanket, Zuma’s pissed that the nativists – from taxi drivers to miners – are using “his” 2007 hit song as a rallying anthem as they go searching for ‘dem furreners” shack-by-shack so that they can throw them out onto the street and burn their hovels to the ground (and maybe butcher them with a machete), the ANC is blaming everyone from the IFP to some unnamed pro-apartheid organization bent on discrediting it ahead of next year’s elections, and they’re being blamed by the DA, the IFP and the Zimbabwean diaspora community for shifting the blame and shirking more effective anti-violence measures against the rioting citizens.

What the fuck is new in this picture?

Oh, maybe the fact that the Zimbabweans are tucked between a rock and a hard place: they can’t go back but they can’t stay in South Africa (and they mostly can’t afford to head across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. Otherwise, they might become fish food floating in a boat to God knows where.). So…stay and die or go and die?

But ooh, the Zimbabweans are fleeing from Mugabe, who’s trying to “liberate” his homeland from the clutches of the old Rhodies and big bad Britain, so the Zims who are fleeing must be part of the problem! Them Zims are taking our jobs! They’re sending valuable income back to their home country! They aren’t true black people! Let’s get ’em!