South Africa And ‘The Road To Gandolfo’

By Edward Gabkwet
South Africa’s recurring xenophobic tendencies and Robert Ludlum’s satirical novel, The Road to Gandolfo, where an eccentric retired General plots to kidnap the Pope for an impractical $1 ransom from each Catholic in the world, share a central premise of weaponized redirection. For more than two decades, South Africa has had to reckon with repeated outbreaks of anti-immigrant violence targeting mainly migrants and refugees from neighbouring nations and other parts of Africa, including Nigeria.
It is a fact that at the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa became a major destination for migrants seeking greener pastures, just as it also struggled with soaring unemplo...