The pastime of chasing a bewildered Zimbabwean down the road with a machete for his nationality and his Pumas has not crossed my mind. But, despite my flippancy, and the possibly useful Ubuntu Derby between Jomo Cosmos and Highlands of Zimbabwe, the issue of xenophobia is at the forefront of many people?s minds.

Mind you, there is a Frenchman (judging from the tricolors that adorn his Citroen) who lives down the road who drives too fast and has a tennis court that he never uses. I have been prompted to don a bandana, my athletics spikes and set to work on sharpening the hockey stick with a view to insertion. I haven?t done it, but it's on the kitchen "to do" list below sousboontjies. I will probably only actually carry out the act if Geoff from next door joins me, as I know he is equally irritated.

The point is that my throwing of empties over the Frenchman?s wall and knocking over his black bin on collection day is not because of his nationality, but rather because of the way he screeches into our road and threatens the dog walk. When Geoff and I do get round to launching our assault ("You go first, Geoff"), it will be labelled xenophobia, just as it would be labelled racist were he black.

The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary of 1970 has xenophobia as a "morbid dislike or fear of foreigners". But it?s not that simple. It's not that black and white.

It's not as simple as Julius, who has been let out of his room after the World Cup?s compulsory sleep, likes to suggest. Last week, in explaining the mercifully limited xenophobic outbreaks, he hinted that there was a reversion to the early 90's trend of white security force operatives applying black polish to their faces in order to spark their Boipatongs. "They," explained Juju last week "enjoy violence among blacks, they enjoy us killing each other."

It's not as simple and as extreme as the theory from Jimmy at the cafe, who says that "our ones" (blacks, I presume) are threatened by those who come here to work, not "sit on street corners and drink Black Label". The rich irony, of course, is that Jimmy is short for Dimitri and he is Greek, about 106, and a good loyalist of Ungrateful South Africa.

"That's how I made it here, china. No one else, expect I suppose the effing Porras, was prepared to open a shop for 12 hours a day, seven days a week and sell Toff-o-Lux and TV Bars to brats like you."

White South Africa can demonise poor little misunderstood Julius, and simplify our xenophobia as per the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, but most white South Africans have not stood at a clinic with an ill baby in Mamelodi, with 134 Zimbabweans and Mozambicans ahead of them in the line with equally ill children.

Winnie Mandela may have been refreshingly more balanced than most when she described our strain of xenophobia as being an "explosion caused by a lack of delivery". But that should not allow a lazy and simplistic refrain to be levelled at a government that has built close on three million houses and that has had to redirect the mild pre-1994 imbalance of 80 percent of the budget being spent on 15 percent of the population.

In 2008, and with the return of the necklace, we bemoaned the failure of intelligence services to warn us of the boil's explosion of pus. During the World Cup we were told to enjoy the tournament while it lasted because trouble was coming.

The upshot is that right now anyone would rather be an overweight Angolan landmine clearer than a Somalian spaza shop owner. Wellington the Malawian has hopped it home with the family, his possessions and some of the lighter children in Shoprite packets, and many a Zimbabwean is now staying in the bosom of the main house, while the owners tut tut over the irrational hatred of foreigners by "our ones", until this wave passes over.

To simplify the issue of xenophobia is simple and simplistic. To explain it is far harder than Julius and Jimmy would have us believe.