Nairobi — On May 12, attacks on foreign nationals began in the Alexandra township in northern Johannesburg. The violence then spread to Diepsloot and Kya Sands to the west of Johannesburg. Tembisa, Ramaphosa, Makause and Thokoza in the eastern sectors of the city as well as the central business district were also affected by the violence.

By Friday, 42 people had been reported killed and 10,000 displaced were seeking refugee in churches, city council premises, and police stations. The South African Police Service (SAPS) reports that approximately 300 people have been arrested. The current situation unfolding in the Gauteng Province echoes some of the recent scenes witnessed in Kenya. However, we should not be too quick to draw parallels since the root causes of the indiscriminate targeting of those perceived to be the "other" is a complex and multilayered phenomenon.

Attacks on outsiders are not a new phenomenon in South Africa. What marks out the Gauteng crisis as unique is the extent to which the violence spread across the city of Johannesburg and the vitriolic nature of the attacks.

The current outbreak of violence is the culmination of years of grievances that have been left to fester. In Cape Town's sprawling townships, some 40 Somalis have been killed since 2006, according to the city's Somali community. In one incident in August 2006, a group of 200 people in the Khayelitsha township attacked Somali-owned shops, compelling them to seek refuge in the seaside township of Masiphumelele.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) voiced concern over this targeting of Somalis, being in a number of cases directly responsible for their wellbeing, since it was involved in finding them sanctuary in South Africa. In March this year, human-rights groups condemned a spate of xenophobic attacks in townships around Pretoria that left four people dead and hundreds homeless.

Since South Africa's democratic transition in 1994, refugees from other parts of Africa including Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Somalia, as well as immigrants from other parts of Africa, Pakistan and India have moved into the country. While the tensions being manifested in South Africa today can be linked to this influx of foreign nationals into the country, this is only part of the story.

Failure to provide for low-income communities combined with the absence of a system to manage the population flows into the country are at the core of the current crisis. The lack of peace and development in Africa can be viewed as the larger issue that also needs to be addressed. History demonstrates that people will migrate wherever they believe they will have access to better social, economic and political opportunities. The US, Canada and Australia were built by immigrant populations.

Today, hundreds of thousands of South Africans have left their homeland for better opportunities elsewhere. So long as there are economically advantaged regions, those seeking to improve their livelihoods will always gravitate towards these areas.

It happens that Gauteng is the powerhouse of the South African economy and therefore a natural target for economic migrants. People seeking to improve their livelihoods are not only flocking into Gauteng from other parts of Africa, and the world, but also from other parts of South Africa, which is why Shangaans Vendas, and Pedis were also targeted in the recent violence that gripped Johannesburg. Some of these South African victims reported that their perpetrators had verbally taunted them with cries of "Go back to Limpopo," a northernmost province neighbouring Zimbabwe.

It is tempting to draw parallels between the crisis and similar situations across Africa, but there are limits to making such comparisons. The fact that low-income people were targeting other low-income people is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the current situation. Xenophobia in this emerging situation is more accurately the symptom but not the cause of the current violence. So there are limits to merely accusing the perpetrators of violence of xenophobia.

Rather, the focus should be on how social and economic deprivation can create a climate in which scapegoats have to be identified. The fact that low-income South Africans perceive a threat to their livelihoods from their equally disadvantaged foreign neighbours after 14 years of independence, suggests that they have not witnessed a noticeable improvement in their wellbeing.

The responsibility for this lack of development and access to basic services cannot reside solely - if at all - with the so-called immigrants, but rather with the provincial and national authorities.

Therefore, what has been labelled as xenophobia can in fact be more accurately understood as "targeted scapegoating."

The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) has been critical of the government for dithering while tensions within the country, especially among the low-income populations, rose to unmanageable levels. An SAIRR statement noted that the government's failures "contributed to create a perfect storm of lawlessness, poverty and unfulfilled expectations, which has now erupted into violence."

The levels of deprivation in a society can reach breaking point when low-income citizens do not see any prospects of raising their standards of living to middle-income levels. Those sympathetic to the acts of the perpetrators of violence have clearly stated that economic considerations are among their key concerns.

As a result of intense competition over hawking areas, the operation of small food stalls and taxi services, there is suspicion that an organised criminal element is orchestrating the attacks. The simultaneous outburst of violence in different locations of Gauteng Province suggests that there was a degree of organisation behind these events. Minister for Safety and Security Charles Nqakula and Ronnie Kasrils, the Minister of Intelligence, have suggested that there is concrete evidence that points towards the role of organised crime in these events. This would then effectively make the solution a law-and-order problem.

However, this is not a law-and-order problem entirely, as there is a genuine grievance among ordinary South Africans who have not taken part in the violence. Therefore, a multipronged approach to addressing the immediate crisis and stabilising communities so that they can rebuild their lives is of paramount importance.

A concerted effort is required to lay the foundations for a sustainable peace in the medium to long-term. The Gauteng provincial government has an enormous task in terms of restoring community safety and promoting peace. The immediate short-term course of action should involve steps to de-escalate the violence and to restore security to the low-income regions of Gauteng and ensure that copycat attacks do not take place in other provinces of South Africa.

Simultaneously, a national dialogue on the role of immigrants in South African society has to be initiated. Evidence will show that middle and high-income immigrants have contributed to the record economic growth of South Africa, an issue that is often overlooked. Provincial governments have to implement strategies for social transformation to economically revitalise the country's townships and accelerate the delivery of basic services to people. In addition, it has become clear that provincial governments need to design and operationalise conflict resolution mechanisms for dealing with grievances that need to be decentralised to the municipal and community level.

The impact of this crisis on South Africa's image as well as the tourism and industrial sectors cannot be underestimated. There is, however, still time to repair the damage and restore confidence in the Rainbow Nation before the 2010 soccer World Cup.

Regrettably, 14 years after the transition from the criminal apartheid state, the majority of South African citizens have not yet begun to experience the benefits and fruits of their country's bounty. So long as this condition persists, it will always be tempting to identify vulnerable scapegoats and persecute them.

Dr Tim Murithi is the author of The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development, published by Ashgate in 2005