Whenever two or more people are gathered around a television watching scenes of xenophobic violence play out on the screen, it is highly likely that one of them will say something about "vandals" or "hooligans" or it being "just an excuse to loot".
This reaction is as understandable as it is predictable. No-one wants to believe that a marauding mob armed with sticks and stones can be fuelled solely by hatred. Much better for everyone's peace of mind if they are merely opportunistic thieves.
Understanding the causes and predicting the likelihood of outbreaks of destructive rage aimed at foreigners are a far more complex matter. It is the subject of a paper released this week by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO).
The paper is titled "Predicting Xenophobic Attitudes: Statistical Path Models of Objective and Subjective Factors". Authored by Mark Orkin, a professor of exalted pedigree in the statistical analysis of social surveys, it analyses data collected from 30,000 South Africans for the observatory's 2015/2016 quality-of-life survey.
In other words, what it says carries a lot more weight than a journalist's unfounded opinion about what people are likely to say when watching televised violence.
Orkin draws a distinction between the elements that underlie xenophobia - causes, attitudes and triggers. When combined in sufficient quantities, these three essential ingredients form a lethal cocktail.
The random events that trigger outbreaks of xenophobic violence are varied and difficult to predict, writes Orkin: "They often include 'violence entrepreneurs', whether threatened local shopkeepers or campaigning provincial or national politicians, abetted by media coverage."
He focuses not on these contextually specific triggers but on the underlying causes and attitudes that give them purchase.
In the GCRO survey, 25% of respondents thought foreigners "should be sent back to their countries", while 75% did not mind people from other countries living in SA as long as they were "legal".
That does not mean, however, that one out of four South Africans is ready to go out and beat up a Nigerian national or raid a Somali-run store.
Hostile attitudes on their own do not cause mob violence. Nor do objective circumstances such as being unemployed, hungry or without proper shelter.
It is not rocket science to surmise that people who are disadvantaged and disempowered might find an outlet for their unhappiness by blaming it on the easy target of an outsider, particularly when that outsider is better off and has been labelled a job stealer, drug dealer or carrier of illness
It is not rocket science to surmise that people who are disadvantaged and disempowered might find an outlet for their unhappiness by blaming it on the easy target of an outsider, particularly when that outsider is better off and has been labelled a job stealer, drug dealer or carrier of illness.
Orkin's analysis tries to predict when and how these forces combine into a tinderbox that can be sparked by an incendiary speech or inflammatory incident.
He uses what he calls "mediators" - emotional factors such as depression and dissatisfaction - to assess the effect of circumstances on attitudes.
This is not mere academic theorising but a matter of practical urgency. As Orkin states: "Almost every month, there is an outbreak of xenophobic violence somewhere in SA, underscoring the importance of improving our explanations of the phenomenon towards better informing policy and shaping interventions."
When impoverished circumstances and levels of depression were correlated, the resulting statistics showed that "residents of informal settlements were approximately 80% more likely than formal residents (that is nearly twice as likely) to have hostile attitudes to foreigners, working through the mediator of depression; the unemployed were 44% more likely than the employed to have hostile attitudes, through being depressed, worried, or dissatisfied with their lives; and those whose households had had to skip a meal in the past were 31% more likely, through dissatisfaction not only with their lives but also with the local authority".
Commenting on this, Orkin writes: "People experiencing the consequences of their distressed circumstances are more likely as a matter of empirical fact to entertain xenophobic attitudes, which might therefore be mitigated if these circumstances are meaningfully tackled by social development."
Poverty and unemployment need to be addressed for many reasons, one of these being the direct role deprivation and misery play in violent eruptions in which people get hurt.
That might sound like an anticlimactic conclusion to anyone expecting dramatic revelations involving third forces who sow seeds of hatred towards foreigners for their own nefarious gains, but it is something to think about before making snap judgments about looters and vandals.
As Orkin puts it: "It may be that out-of-school youth are no less or more of a 'ticking time-bomb' for xenophobia, potentially to be mobilised by self-interested businessmen or politicians, than everyone else who is driven to worry and depression by the configuration of poverty, hunger, unemployment and perhaps also informal residence."
• De Groot is deputy features editor
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.