Whenever the South African government has not wanted to deal with an international crisis which other countries want the United Nations (UN) Security Council to address, it has invoked the argument that the problem is not a threat to international peace and security.
That is the official requirement for involving the Security Council in a dispute. The South African government most famously - or notoriously - invoked that rule when it voted against a resolution condemning the human rights abuses of the Burmese military junta.
It has also invoked this criterion to resist international efforts to put Zimbabwe on the Security Council agenda. Precisely what constitutes a threat to international peace and security has not been defined at the UN.
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But when violence spills over the borders of the country in question, that should surely qualify it for Security Council attention.
Last week, we saw the crisis in Zimbabwe erupt in Alexandra, Johannesburg, as South Africans attacked foreigners, mostly Zimbabwean, accusing them of stealing their jobs, their women and their possessions.
Those who kill, rape or otherwise assault foreigners must ultimately carry the blame themselves for their actions.
But this eruption of xenophobia also took place within a wider context of national and foreign policy, which must also be examined if the violence is to be understood properly and avoided in the future.
The Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University has laid at least some of the blame on the South African government for failing to construct a national policy to deal with the huge inflow of millions of Zimbabwean economic and political refugees into the country.
These people have greatly increased the competition with locals for scarce jobs and services. The migration programme's latest report, "Responding to Zimbabwean Migration to South Africa", says: "The scale of the impact is just as much the result of the lack of responses to the migration flow as to the migration itself.
"The lack of a clear policy decision can also lead to popular disaffection."
The report notes that, among other things, the government has failed to harness the skills of the migrants - many of whom are assumed to possess useful skills - and to integrate them into the South African economy.
It is true that the SA government has also failed to deliver services adequately to South Africans, and so the lack of a Zimbabwean refugee policy could just be a variation of this overall problem in domestic policy.
But it does look as though the inadequate response to the refugee or illegal immigrant problem is aggravated by a foreign policy shortcoming, namely Pretoria's failure to acknowledge, fully, that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe and that it has repercussions beyond its own borders.
If it did acknowledge the crisis fully, it might by now have mobilised the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other UN relief agencies fully to help address the problem.
Perhaps the government could have received UN funding to address some of the needs of the Zimbabweans.
And, of course, besides this humanitarian aspect, if the South African government admitted the full extent of the crisis, it might, instead of blocking it, have actually encouraged the UN Security Council to address what is after all the political cause of the problem - President Robert Mugabe's government.
Right now, Mugabe is aggravating the refugee problem acutely because the campaign of violence by his thugs, which he has unleashed against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, is swelling the flow of illegals across the border.
But, of course, it is because he has manipulated the economy for political ends since 2000 that it has collapsed in the first place, launching the flood of what are largely economic refugees across the Limpopo - and into Botswana and Mozambique too.
Does the murder and mayhem in Alexandra last week not constitute a threat to peace and security outside Zimbabwe's borders?
Does this not then justify the attention of the UN Security Council?
- This article was originally published on page 9 of Cape Times on May 19, 2008
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