Part II: Black African Immigrants in South Africa

African Immigrants in South Africa

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 364 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (1 December 2008)

ISBN-10: 0981425828

ISBN-13: 9780981425825

Part II:

Black African Immigrants

in South Africa

BLACK Africans mostly from the countries of southern Africa have migrated to South Africa through the decades to work in the mines and other sectors of the economy.

During white minority rule especially in the 1950s, the apartheid regime even provided free transport for Africans

from neighbouring countries who wanted to work in the mines.

They came mostly from Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (Botswana), Nyasaland (Malawi), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) when the countries were still under colonial rule. All these countries were once ruled by Britain.

Even one of my cousins from Tanganyika went to work in the mines in Johannesburg in the late fifties. His father, my father's elder brother, also went to South Africa earlier in the 1940s and never returned to Tanganyika.

But the recruitment of African labour did not continue in all the countries after they won independence. Tanganyika under the leadership of President Julius Nyerere stopped its citizens from going to South Africa even to visit let alone work because of that country's racist policy of apartheid.

But there were many Tanganyikans already working in the mines in South Africa and many of them, if not the majority, stayed in South Africa even after their country won independence from Britain in December 1961. And they are still there today, together with their children and grandchildren Others migrated to South Africa after apartheid ended in 1994. These Tanzanians have been drawn to South Africa for the same reason other people have. They flock to South Africa to look for jobs.

As a Tanzanian myself who grew up in Tanganyika in the fifties and sixties, I remember that many people left Tanganyika (as the country was then known before uniting with Zanzibar in 1964 to form Tanzania) to work in the mines in South Africa,and even in Northern Rhodesia and in the Belgian Congo in those years and before then.

Members of my tribe, the Nyakyusa, constituted one of the largest ethnic groups of migrant workers from Tanganyika who went to work in the mines in South Africa in the 1950s.

And in an ironic twist, some of the migrant workers from Tanganyika who were recruited as labourers to work in the South African mines had originally migrated from South Africa to Tanganyika. They were the Ngoni. As I state in my book, Life in Tanganyika in The Fifties:

“The fifties were without question some of the most important years of my life. They were my formative years as much as the sixties were. And I remember listening to many inspiring stories which helped to enlarge my mental horizon at such an early age. And they have remained a source of inspiration throughout my life. My father was one of the people who liked to tell stories about hard work and success in life and played a critical role in shaping my personality when I was growing up.

I also remember hearing stories of valour about the Nyakyusa during my time and in the past including their successful campaigns against the Ngoni in the 1830s, '40s and '50s when the Ngoni tried to invade and penetrate Nyakyusaland. The Nyakyusa also successfully repelled the Sangu who invaded our district in the 1870s and 1880s from neighbouring Usangu in Mbeya District. Like the Nyakyusa, the Sangu had a quite a reputation as fierce fighters. But they were no match for the Nyakyusa who stopped their incursions into Nyakyusaland.

The few white missionaries who settled in Rungwe District also tried to intervene and act as mediators in the conflicts not only between the Nyakyusa and the Sangu but also between the Nyakyusa and the Safwa, then the largest ethnic group in Mbeya District until they were later outnumbered by the Nyakyusa. They also played a mediating role in other conflicts including intra-tribal (or intra-ethnic) disputes but not always successfully.

But, besides the Nyakyusa, it was the Ngoni whom I remember the most for their reputation as fighters mainly because I interacted with them in the sixties. Their legendary reputation as fighters sent a chill down the spine and many of their neighbours were afraid of them, except a few like the Nyakyusa, and the Hehe who, under their leader Chief Mkwawa, once defeated the Germans.

Originally from Natal Province in South Africa, the Ngoni settled in Songea District in southern Tanganyika, as well as in Sumbawanga in the western part of the country where they came to be known as the Fipa, which is their ethnic name and identity even today. They had a reputation as fierce fighters even in South Africa itself before they left during the imfecane in the 1820s and '30s headed north, finally settling in what is now Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. Some of them even went to Congo after going through Tanganyika.

I went to Songea Secondary School which was a boarding school in Songea District, the home district of the Ngoni, in southern Tanzania and talked to many Ngonis including some who were old enough to be my parents when I was in my teens back then in the sixties. Almost without exception, they all recalled the stories they were told by their elders when they were growing up on how the Nyakyusa and the Ngoni fought when the Ngoni tried to invade and conquer Nyakyusaland, to no avail.

They told me that the Nyakyusa ni watani wetu, a Swahili expression meaning they are our friends and we tell jokes about each other. Many of those "jokes" have to do with how hard the Nyakyusa fought to repel the Ngoni invaders after the Ngoni failed to steal Nyakyusa cows and women!

Some of the Ngoni also went to work in the mines in South Africa - where they originally came from - but not in significant numbers as the Nyakyusa and other people from the Southern Highlands did, especially from Rungwe and Mbeya Districts in a region bordering what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

Northern Rhodesia itself attracted many mine workers from my region and many of them settled in that country. Even today, you will find many Nyakyusas who settled in Kitwe and other parts of the Copperbelt many years ago after they went to work there in the mines. For example, in 1954 the Nyakyusa in Kitwe formed an organisation to preserve, protect and promote their interests as a collective entity.

The Lozi, members of another ethnic group from Baraotseland or Barotse Province and one of the largest in Zambia, also formed their own organisation around the same time, as did others and some even before then including the Ngoni. And they were all cited as examples of ethnic solidarity among the mine workers in Kitwe and other parts of the Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia. The Nyakyusa presence in what is now Zambia is still strong even today.

In fact, one of my mother's first cousins who was older than my mother emigrated from Tanganyika to Northern Rhodesia as a young man in the early 1940s. He was the son of my mother's uncle Asegelile Mwankemwa who was the pastor of our church, Kyimbila Moravian Church at Kyimbila in Rungwe District. He also lived in South Africa for a number of years before returning to Northern Rhodesia where he eventually became a high government official after the country won independence as Zambia.

He returned to Tanzania in the 1990s to spend his last days in the land of his birth. Tragically, he had forgotten Kinyakyusa and did not know Kiswahili after so many years of absence from Tanganyika, later Tanzania, and could communicate only in English and Bemba, one of the major languages in Zambia. All his children were also born and brought up in Northern Rhodesia.

And he was just one of the many people from my district who migrated to Northern Rhodesia and even some of them to South Africa. Jobs in the mines in both countries was the biggest attraction, encouraging many Tanganyikans to go there in those days.

The town of Mbeya was their main departure point heading south and was the largest town in the region. It was also the capital of the Southern Highlands Province when I was growing up.

The people who had been recruited to work in the mines in South Africa boarded planes called WENELA. I remember that name very well because I heard it all the time when I was growing up in the fifties. The people would say so-and-so has gone to Wenela, meaning to work in the mines in South Africa. The term became an integral part of our vocabulary in the 1950s, probably as much as it was even before then among the Nyakyusa and others.

The name WENELA was an acronym for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association which was responsible for the recruitment of cheap labour among Africans in neighbouring countries including Tanganyika to work in the mines in South Africa. They were sometimes recruited to work in other sectors of the economy but primarily in the mines.

Many of the people who were recruited in Tanganyika were flown down there unlike, for example, those from Basutoland (now Lesotho) or Bechuanaland (now Botswana) who, because of their proximity to South Africa, were transported by buses.

But many people from Tanganyika were also transported by road from Mbeya in the Southern Highlands to Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia. And from there they were taken to Mungu in Barotseland, the western province of Northern Rhodesia, and then flown to Francistown in Bechuanaland; and finally transported by railway to Johannesburg.

Working in the mines was hard labour, with little pay. But it was still something for people who virtually had nothing in terms of money. That's why they were drawn down there.

I remember my cousin Daudi worked for three years in the mines in Johannesburg. But when he came back to Tanganyika, he hardly had anything besides a wooden box he used as a "suitcase" - and which was the only popular and common "suitcase" among many Africans in those days - and may be a couple of shirts, two pairs of trousers, and a simple pair of shoes he wore when he returned home. In fact, he came straight to our village, from Johannesburg, to live with us.

My father was also his father, and the only one had, since his own biological father migrated to South Africa. His father left behind two children, Daudi himself, and his only sister, Esther, who was also younger than Daudi. Tragically, she died only a few years after Daudi returned from South Africa.

He went to South Africa to earn some money, yet returned hardly with any. It was hard life not only for him but for most Africans who went to work in the mines and even for those who remained in the villages.

In general the people were not starving in Tanganyika in the fifties. There was plenty of food especially in fertile regions such as the Southern Highlands where I come from. And my home district of Rungwe is one of the most fertile in the entire East Africa and on the whole continent. Almost anything, any kind of food, grows there: from bananas to sweet potatoes, groundnuts to beans, and all kinds of fruits and vegetables, besides cash crops such as coffee and tea, and much more.

But the people were poor in terms of financial resources. They had very little money. And that is why some of them went all the way to South Africa and to neighbouring Northern Rhodesia to work in the mines.

Some of them also ended up in Katanga Province, in the Congo, which is about 300 miles west from my home region of Mbeya. With all its minerals as the treasure trove of Congo, Katanga Province was another prime destination for job seekers from neighbouring countries who were looking for jobs in the mines.

The Nyakyusa from my home district were some of the people who ended up there. For example, I vividly remember a photograph of a Nyakyusa family published in the Daily News, Dar es Salaam, when I worked there as a news reporter in the early seventies.

They had lived in Congo for about 40 years but were expelled from the country and forced to return to Tanzania in what seemed to be a xenophobic campaign fuelled by anti-foreign sentiments in spite of the fact that members of this family, as well as many others, had lived in Congo for decades and their children were born and brought up there.

Therefore there was quite a contrast in terms of living standards between Africans and Europeans as well as between Africans and Asians; also between Africans and Arabs. Africans were the poorest. But there was no hostility, at least not overt, on the part of Africans towards whites and others in spite of such disparity in living standards; not to the extent that the social order was threatened in a way that could have led to chaos in the country.” (Godfrey Mwakikagile, Life in Tanganyika in The Fifties, Second Edition, Continental Press, 2007, pp. 110 – 114).

Tanzania is one of the few African countries which have been spared the agony of violent ethnic and racial convulsions on this turbulent continent. For decades, Tanzania also has been a haven for the largest number of refugees on the continent. In fact, it has had one of the largest refugee populations in the entire world since the 1950s.

Some of the refugees came from South Africa during the apartheid era and they lived without being harassed, intimidated or attacked by their hosts, Tanzanians. They were welcomed with open arms. And many of them still live in Tanzania.

Ironically, some of the biggest victims of the xenophobic violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid have been Tanzanians whose country sacrificed so much to help black people in South Africa win their freedom.

Some of the Tanzanians, like many other Africans from different parts of Africa, were married to South Africans. Therefore for those who had some children, their children were South African by birth. Citizenship was their birth right. Yet many black South Africans did not accept them because one of their parents was a foreigner, although just from another African country and was therefore a fellow African. Still, being a fellow African meant nothing, absolutely nothing, to black South Africans who attacked black African immigrants.

Black South Africans also accused black African immigrants of stealing their women on top of stealing their jobs and even their houses. And many immigrants were accused of bribing local officials to get houses even though a significant number of them bought the houses and did not take any short cuts to get them.

It didn't matter that the people they were attacking also had rights as fellow human beings. They had human rights but according to their attackers they had none. And it didn't matter they were fellow Africans.

It also didn't matter that the people they were attacking came from the countries which not only sacrificed so much in terms of material and financial support to help black South Africans who fled to those countries during apartheid; these countries, Tanzania and others, also lost hundreds and even thousands of people during the liberation struggle when the apartheid regime inflicted heavy punishment and heavy casualties on them for supporting blacks in South Africa in their quest for freedom.

And it didn't matter that many of them also had the legal right to live in South Africa. And for those who did not have that, they were, at the very least, entitled to compassion from their hosts as fellow human beings, as fellow Africans, and as compatriots in the liberation struggle against apartheid.

Nicole Johnson, a reporter of one of South Africa's leading newspapers, the Mail&Guardian, visited one such family – the head of the family was a Tanzanian – and had this to say in her report published in the 24 May 2008 edition of the Mail&Guardian, entitled, “'Tell Them We're From Here'”:

Sunday

“The battles raging on the streets of Jeppestown on Sunday (18 May 2008) couldn’t crack my journalistic composure, but Mohamed made me cry. He’s seven years old, beautiful and sparky and he’s been driven from his home because he has a Tanzanian father.

Mohamed Fall was born in Johannesburg General Hospital, his mother is South African and he is in grade 2 at John Mitchell Primary in Jeppestown.

Until Saturday night they lived in the Radium Hotel in Jeppestown.

'At night they came, they were hitting the gate. They made a big noise and they chased us,' Mohamed says. He watched as they destroyed the hotel he has called home for most of his life. 'They broke the bar and they took the beers and the coins and the money.'

And he watched as they tried to assault his mother, Tracy Aspelling, accusing her of being a Zimbabwean. She survived because she is from Port Elizabeth and managed to convince them of this.

That wasn’t enough to save their home or belongings, though. 'We just left our stuff and ran,' says Aspelling. As they ran, they saw the neighbourhood being destroyed by looters: 'They have sticks and they hit the shops and steal clothes,' Mohamed told me. 'I think they’re sick.

'We don’t know where to sleep so we came here,' he says. Tracy is adamant that she will not be driven out of the country. 'I was born here. I am not going anywhere.' Mohamed is less sure: 'It will happen again,' he says matter of factly. 'I don’t feel nice -- I feel bad.'

As he sits in the courtyard of the police station on Sunday afternoon, in his neatly pressed coffee-coloured shirt and shorts, he seems remarkably composed. Both he and his mother seem determined to continue as normal. She plans to go to work the next day. 'I need to go to school tomorrow,' Mohamed tells me resolutely. Then his face falls as he remembers afresh: 'They broke our house and took my uniform.'

Monday

Mohamed doesn’t go to school on Monday. The number of refugees in the police station has doubled overnight.

New, bloodied victims continue to stream in and the police are reluctant to let anyone out. His mother doesn’t have the money for school transport anyway -- her purse was one of the first things the mob stole. 'My mom said I mustn’t go to school.'

Mohamed feels reassured because he is not the only one missing school -- lots more children have turned up, including twins Annie and Rose Bofonge (8), who are in his grade 2 class at John Mitchell. They sit under a marquee erected for mothers with children, playing clapping games and giggling. 'We only got oranges and sweets yesterday. I was hungry at night. It was cold at night and I had only a small blanket.'

At lunchtime the food supply in the makeshift refugee camp is erratic. 'I just got food now, two slices of bread, Mohamed says. It’s the first thing he’s eaten all day.

His mother has somehow managed to get out of the station and go to her job at a shop in the area. She is terrified she will be replaced if she doesn’t show up and also of being unemployed and homeless. Having an income is her only chance of rebuilding her family when this madness has passed.

As I leave, Mohamed extracts two promises from me -- that I will come see him the next day and that I spread the word: 'Tell them we are not the foreigners. We are the South Africans.'

Tuesday

By Tuesday evening the children are all a lot more subdued. Days of sleeping outdoors in Jo’burg’s winter, of overcrowding, inadequate food and nowhere to wash are taking their toll.

Mohamed’s clothes are dirty and crumpled and he appears to have lost a shoe.

A local resident has brought him a jersey to put over his short-sleeved shirt and shorts. Women sing and dance, clapping and stamping among the towering piles of bags and belongings, trying to keep their spirits up and to keep warm.

Mohamed’s mother sits on a bundle of someone’s possessions, her arm around her child, staring dully at what has become her world in the past few days. They don’t feel much like talking.”

Another victim whose plight was also brought to national attention in South Africa and elsewhere after what happened to him was reported in the same paper, the Mail&Guardian, was Percy Zvumoya, a journalist from Zimbabwe, whose country also sacrificed so much to help black South Africans win their freedom.

And like thousands of black African immigrants who had lived in peace and harmony with their neighbours, many of them for years, Percy Zvumoya also found out that his neighbours turned against him.

Obviously, the relative peace and harmony the black African immigrants enjoyed living with their black South African neighbours was more apparent than real.

Little did they know that there was latent hostility towards them among their black South African neighbours which would one day bubble to the surface and explode with dire consequences.

Percy Zvumoya's story, written by himself, was published in the 24 May 2008 edition of the Mail&Guardian under the headline, “'You Can't Imagine The Pain”:

“I was about to retire for the night last Thursday (22 May) when a group of people came in and said: “Get out and give us the keys to this place”. I negotiated with them and they allowed me take a few things like clothing.

I fled from my house into the township. I came back later because I had nowhere else to go. I was really scared, I couldn’t get back into the house and hid on the roof from where I made a call to the police.

They advised me to leave. They told me they couldn’t do much because they were stretched. In the morning I went to my employer’s house and stayed there.

When I went back to my house the following day [Friday] they had taken my DVD player, my television and my bed. I could only retrieve the fridge which they had not carried away. I left the fridge with friends in the township.

I came to South Africa from Zimbabwe when I was about 18, that was in 1989. But I am now a citizen, I got my ID book last year. My wife still lives in Zimbabwe with our three children. I am here to work and to support my family. I don’t know what I have done. I have been living well with my neighbours.

But when this broke out even my neighbours, people I have lived with for 13 years, were shouting: “He should go. He is a Kalanga” [Kalanga is a tribe found in southern Zimbabwe and the north of Botswana]. These are people I have lived with and they sold me out because they were jealous of the little that I had gathered.

Even if things return to normal I don’t think I can live with these people again. I don’t think I can go back.

I built that house myself. Before it was a tin shack and rats were getting in. I thought I should build a proper house, I built it slowly, buying a brick at a time. And now people just came and order me out. It’s painful.

I didn’t borrow from anyone to buy all these things. I earned them with the sweat of my brow. But I guess I should forget about these things, there is nothing I can do.

I can’t understand the rationale of all this. I am a citizen of this state. I was chased from my own home. I don’t know what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to go.

I guess I will work again. I still have the strength. I can’t go back to Alex. Maybe I should go back to the country of my birth. But it’s bad there too.

I was planning on my kids coming here, but not when it’s like this. There is so much suffering in Zim-babwe, but it would be better for them to stay there.

You can’t imagine the pain I went through after my ordeal. I cried the whole night. Have you ever cried the whole night? I thought I was going to get hypertension or something.

I talked to some people who were displaced like me. Some suggested we should douse the whole street with petrol and burn the whole neighbourhood. I firmly said no. We can’t do that. We shouldn’t [take] revenge. God is for us all. He is the one who should judge. You see all these kids? Can you imagine them dead? I said no. We would hurt many innocent people who have nothing to do with this thuggery.

What I can’t understand about this is how would foreign-based South Africans react if other countries in the world chased them away? That would be barbaric.

Do you remember that during apartheid South Africans were living in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Britain and many other places? I wonder how this violence will end but I know many people will die.

Did you see the picture of the man who was burnt to death? How can women watch someone burn to death and laugh?

Why did they give me citizenship? So that mobs burn me while some people laugh?”

Many South Africans, in condemning the violence, reminded their fellow countrymen of the sympathy and kindness South Africans were accorded by other African countries during apartheid. As the secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Gwede Mantashe, stated on Friday, 23 May 2008, one day after the violence against black African foreigners erupted in Cape Town and 12 days after the attacks first started farther north in the township of Alexandra near Johannesburg:

“Many of us, including myself, will think of the kindness we received in the poorest communities of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria and many other African states.

We will recall that our neighbours were collectively punished by the apartheid regime for harbouring the cadres of the ANC.

We will remember that our children were given spaces in overcrowded schools in remote rural villages, and when we were injured and ill, the hospitals of many African countries nursed us back to health.”

He was quoted by the Mail&Guardian in its main news report, “'Deliberate Effort' Behind Attacks,” Friday, 22 May 2008.

As an expression of solidarity with the suffering black South Africans, Tanganyika was the first country in the region to sever links with the apartheid regime. The ties between the two countries existed during colonial rule. And she refused to establish diplomatic and commercial ties with the apartheid regime because of her uncompromising opposition to the country's racist policies which denied blacks and other non-whites equality.

But although Tanganyika did not allow her citizens to go to South Africa during the apartheid era after the country won independence in 1961, she did not have much company in the region in that respect.

People from the other countries in the region never stopped going to South Africa to work in the mines after their countries won independence. And the migratory trend has continued through the years with even much larger numbers of them going to South Africa after the end of apartheid.

The end of apartheid ushered the dawn of new era not only for South Africa but for the entire continent. One of the most significant developments was the increase in immigration of a large number of people into South Africa from the other countries on the continent, mostly those in sub-Saharan Africa.

The immigrants, legal and illegal, were drawn to South Africa by employment opportunities and better living conditions in the most developed country on the continent. But they found out that they were not always welcome in the new South Africa.

So, hostility towards black African immigrants by black South Africans is nothing new. Contempt for them among many black South Africans who think they are better than other black Africans – because they are indigenous to the most developed country on the continent – is nothing new either.

Yet – and I'll be brutally frank about it – black South Africans can not legitimately claim to have substantially contributed to the technological progress of South Africa which enabled it to become the most advanced country on the continent. They have contributed something but not as much as whites have in terms of high skills. So they're claiming credit for something they did not do. And the reason is simple.

Black South Africans did not get the opportunity to get the kind of education whites did which would have enabled them to contribute – substantially – to the country's technological progress.

Throughout the nation's history black South Africans have more than anything else contributed manual labour, not scientific knowledge, towards national development. There's no question that there have been a number of educated black South Africans in many scientific fields, but not that many to have had a significant impact on the country's technological progress.

It does not mean that they're not intelligent – they are, and they're well-endowed in terms of mental faculties just like other Africans as well as other human beings. But they have never had the skills and the kind of education whites have had to develop the country as an industrial and technologically advanced society.

It was white South Africans, not black South Africans, who developed South Africa as a technologically advanced society. If all highly skilled whites were to pull out of South Africa today, the country would collapse overnight! Even sensible black South Africans acknowledge that their country will be in trouble if that happened.

In fact, black people in many African countries are far more educated than black South Africans are. And that includes many black African immigrants in South Africa, the very same people black South Africans despise so much.

Take Nigeria as an example. The number of highly educated people Nigeria has is something black South Africans can only dream of. And many other African countries such as Zimbabwe, Ghana and Kenya have far more educated people than black South Africans do.

Even Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in the world, had the highest literacy rate in Africa – over 90 per cent – when Nyerere was president, higher than India's, a country with the third-largest number of scientists after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

A very large number of black Africans from many parts of the continent are highly educated people.

Yet, these are the very same people many black South Africans despise as makwerekwere, a loaded term which brands all black Africans – except black South Africans – as a despicable lot. But the logic behind such characterisation is as flawed as it is stupid.

Many South African employers hire blacks from other African countries, not because they are not black South Africans; they hire them because they are more qualified for the jobs than black South Africans are.

Yet contempt for black Africans from other countries among many black South Africans is an enduring phenomenon even though it is the kind of contempt that comes from a false sense of pride.

Black South Africans have the right to be proud of their country. But they have no right – none whatsoever – to claim as theirs the contribution made by educated white South Africans to the development of South Africa as a technologically advanced society, at least on the African continent, even if in many respects (not all) it's just another Third World country in a global context.

Black South Africans should not claim credit for the technological development of South Africa in the scientific arena. They have contribute little in the scientific realm.

Without the professional and technological skills of white South Africans responsible for the nation's industrial and technological progress black South Africans are so much proud of, South Africa would be just another African country, very underdeveloped, and everything else that goes with it: no infrastructure, no institutional capacity, and much more.

That is the truth, bitter truth, black South Africans who despise other black Africans need to be told when they call other Africans makwerkwere.

Not all black South Africans feel that way but those who do need to be told the truth.

It is a bitter pill to swallow. But they need to swallow it together with their false sense of pride thinking that they are the ones who developed South Africa as the most technologically advanced society on the African continent in sharp contrast with the other countries to the north which they make fun of. They're deluding themselves!

And it is this delusional thinking which also explains why many of them call black Africans from other African countries makwerekwere.

The term makwerekwere or amakwerekwere says it all in terms of how they see or how they look at other black Africans from other parts of the continent. As one South African, Boitumelo Magolego, stated in the South African newspaper, the Mail&Guardian, in his May 2008 post in the column for Mandela Rhodes Scholars when xenophobic terror against black African immigrants was going on:

“Makwerekwere is used to refer to black Africans who are not South Africans....

This word has a very negative sting to it and is often used with contempt....It has undertones which speak of how black Africans are believed to be sub–human, too dark and have a pungent smell.

Two other words also used in this regard are grigamba and kom–ver (as in the Afrikaans kom van ver) — each prepended with the relevant prefix ( I- for singular and Ma- for plural, for example, in the case of grigamba: igrigamba and magrigamba).

Even though these words seem new to some people, I have been hearing them as far back as I can remember. My grandparents also say that these words have been in use for as long as they can remember.

What’s my point? The contempt with which South Africans regard black African foreigners is not a post–democracy phenomenon....

I would like to address the ability to identify makwerekwere from a group of people.

Primarily makwerekwere are believed to have a black (as in coal black) skin complexion. They are believed to have a pungent smell.

It is said to be such a strong smell that I have heard a number of girls say that when walking by in a mall and it hits you, you cannot mistake it for anything but - (makwerekwere!).

I have been in a taxi where the passengers refused what was a Mozambican national entry into the taxi, retorting “driver re na re ka se kgone” (driver the assault on our nostrils is just too much to bear).

Lastly, there is language and accent (to identify a makwerekwere).

I have conversed on multiple occasions with people from Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, DRC, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and I did not think nor notice that all those individuals had a particular smell.

I have been to Kenya and I did not think nor notice the people there to have had a particular smell (excuse the arrogance in proclaiming myself arbiter of who smells and who not).

Have I encountered this spoken of smell? Yes, I have (on multiple occasions). Do I think that all people from Africa are dark? No, I know many individuals from these countries who have a fair complexion. The Kenyan population, in general, I feel could pass off as “South African” - that is in terms of complexion.

Do I agree that there are some black foreigners who are a tad dark? Yes, but the same could be said for some South Africans.”

So, there is deep contempt for black Africans from other African countries among many black South Africans. It's nothing new, and it's not going to stop. And it amounts to another form of apartheid – Black South Africa against the rest of Black Africa – to South Africa's detriment.

Such arrogance may have played a role in fuelling hostility towards the black African immigrants. But it's probably the misconception and wrong belief that the immigrants are responsible for the poverty and suffering of black South Africans, especially in the townships, which has been responsible for the xenophobic violence against black foreigners in South Africa more than anything else. And there's no question that bigotry against blacks from other countries has played a major role as well.

After the end of apartheid, black African immigrants in South Africa are now facing a new enemy, fellow Africans who don't want them there.

I have compiled some material to shed some light on a highly disturbing phenomenon that has developed through the years in post-apartheid South Africa: rabid anti-foreign sentiments among many black South Africans directed against black immigrants, legal and illegal, from other African countries who live in South Africa.

In many cases, anti-foreign sentiments against the Africans immigrants in South Africa involve violence including murder.

Black African immigrants in South Africa have been the victims of xenophobic violence perpetrated against them by Black South Africans since the mid-1990s soon after apartheid ended.

Many black immigrants have been killed in South Africa through the years. A significant number of them have also been killed in gruesome ways.

Some have been tossed out of trains, hacked to death, and burned alive. Even their homes have been torched, with all their belongings, reduced to ashes. Women have been raped. Even children have been killed.

Their attackers didn't see them as equal human beings; they saw them as less than human. As Victor Khupiso of The Times, Johannesburg, 24 2008, stated in his report, about some of the people who were burned alive, entitled “'The Dog is Dead,' I Heard Them Say”:

“Mozambican describes horror as mob sets his brother-in-law alight.

Pictures of a man in flames, kneeling in agony on a street in Ramaphosa informal settlement, confronted the world on television and the front pages of newspapers this week.

Ernesto Alphabeto Nhamwavane, a 22-year-old Mozambican, became the face of the horror engulfing Gauteng as xenophobic mobs continued to drive foreigners out of their neighbourhoods this week.

Last Sunday , Nhamwavane, and his sister’s husband, Fransisco Avmando Kanze, were fleeing the shack they shared in the settlement outside Reiger Park, east of Johannesburg.

Their neighbours had told them all Shangaan speakers were about to be attacked.

On Thursday, the Sunday Times tracked Kanze to the OR Tambo Memorial Hospital in Benoni, where he lies with a broken hand and gashes in his head, back and legs inflicted by a machete-wielding mob.

The 29-year-old father of five spoke of how the mob left him for dead and turned to his brother-in-law — pouring petrol on him and his belongings, setting him alight, and covering him with his own blankets and clothes to ensure he died the worst death possible.

The men, from Nyambane village in the Mozambican province of Gaza, were both bricklayers who arrived in South Africa in February in search of work to enable them to send money to their families.

Sunday was Kanze’s day off from the building site in Primrose where they both worked.

Nhamwavane had been at work in the morning and Kanze had been waiting so they could flee together. Once Nhamwavane got home, they grabbed some clothes and prepared to leave.

'We were confronted by a group armed with hammers, machetes and pangas. Others had stones,' Kanze said.

'They stopped us and demanded to see our IDs. Then they said there was no need because our dark skins and accents made it clear we are foreigners.'

Kanze said the mob of “over 100” people took their cellphones and the “few rands” they had on them.

'They began attacking us, saying we are amakwerekwere (foreigners), and we are stealing and committing all sorts of crimes in the settlement.'

The mob hacked at his and his brother-in-law’s flesh with their pangas and machetes.

'We were pleading with them to spare our lives. Blood from my head was flowing like a river. I collapsed,' he said.

'Then they stopped attacking me, probably thinking that I was dead. I heard them saying ‘Lenja ifile’ (the dog is dead).'

From where he lay, Kanze watched as his brother-in-law begged for his life.

'He was screaming for help, but it was as if everyone wanted a share of the assault,' he said.

'He stopped screaming and they poured petrol over him and set him on fire, spreading our clothes around him so that the fire could spread fast.'

The smoke from Nhamwavane’s burning body drifted over to Kanze and he knew they didn’t stand a chance. 'I believed I was going to die too.'

A local teenage girl alerted Sunday Times photographer Simphiwe Nkwali that a mob was “killing Shangaans”. Nkwali and other photographers raced to the scene, followed by police, who put out the flames on Nhamwavane.

The two men were rushed to hospital, but Nhamwavane died on arrival, Kanze said.

'I’m grateful to the police for saving my life. I could hear them [the mob] arguing about whether they should also set me alight. Others wanted to come and check if I was still breathing.'

On Friday, Kanze phoned his family in Mozambique to tell them what had happened.

They had learnt from other refugees that their “quiet, hard-working son” was burned alive.

'I will recover, I will recover, but I don’t think I’ll be able to use my hand again,' he told his weeping wife, Nhamwavane’s sister, who was begging him to come home.

And as soon as Kanze is discharged from hospital, he will do just that. 'We don’t face being roasted alive at home,' he said.

Nhamwavane’s body lies at the Germiston mortuary and Kanze is set to accompany his South African-based relatives to claim the body tomorrow.

'I will definitely identify the body. I know it is him. No matter how badly his body is burned.'”

Other black immigrants have also been “necklaced” with burning tyres by rampaging mobs, a tactic that became popular in the 1970s and 1980s in the townships where many people were burned alive – tyres filled with petrol and put around their necks – for being traitors, “spying” for the apartheid regime.

Even some policemen have accompanied the attackers. As Anderson Ingwe, a 28-year-old car mechanic from Zimbabwe, said:

“If we stay in South Africa we are killed. If we go back we will be accused of being MDC supporters and we will be beaten or killed.

Here in South Africa we feel so unwelcome. When the men came to attack the place where I was staying, they had policemen with them.

It is almost as though the South African authorities want this to happen. If that is so, then they should just say peacefully: 'You are not welcome, Zimbabweans. Now go home.' What is going on is inhuman and unfair. When I grew up in Harare there were South Africans in my class. We treated them like our brothers.”

He was quoted by Alex Duval Smith in his report, “Is This The End of the Rainbow Nation?” in the Mail&Guardian, Johannesburg, 25 May 2008.

Another immigrant, Pedro Chinavana from Mozambique, was quoted in the same report, saying: “South African blacks...have a terrible inferiority complex. They think our skin is too dark and they call us Amakwerekwere. The police speak to us in Zulu and, if we cannot reply, they demand our rands. They say: 'You don't have rands in your country. That is South African money. This is mine.' They think they are doing their country a favour.”

And as Alex Duval Smith stated in the same report:

“At his office in Central Methodist Church, Bishop Paul Verryn has become convinced that "the attacks are carefully strategised and manipulated. The motivation is to create a sense of ungovernability.' He confirms claims that police officers have 'chaperoned' attackers.”

When the immigrants are attacked, they don't get much help from the police if at all.

Some immigrants, and probably many of them, also blamed the government, about which Alex Duval Smith had this to say:

“Established immigrants see the start of a worrying trend. 'Either there is government complicity, and that is unconscionable, or the government does not know how to react,' said writer Alois Rwiyegura, from Burundi, himself the survivor of an attack nine years ago. 'If the South African government does not know what to do, then how will it react if - as many of us fear - the violence degenerates into inter-ethnic clashes between poor South Africans?'”

The attacks are brutal. And the message is blunt: “Get out! And Get out Now! Go back where you came from. You're not welcome in South Africa!”

Yet the people who are being beaten, maimed, killed, and even burnt alive, are the very same people whose countries sacrificed so much to help black South Africans when they were groaning under apartheid.

Even a poor country like Tanzania paid an enormous price and made substantial contributions to the liberation struggle to free South Africa and other countries in the region – Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola – which were still under white domination.

Tanzania was chosen by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 to be the headquarters of all the African liberation movements including the African National Congress (ANC) which led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and became the ruling party after the end of white minority rule in that country.

Another South African liberation organisation, the Pan-Africanist Congress was also based in Tanzania as were all the other liberation movements on the continent including the PAIGC of the Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in West Africa.

Tanzania also made enormous financial contributions towards the struggle in spite of its poverty and its president, Julius Nyerere, was the foremost champion of the struggle against apartheid among all the African leaders. He was also chairman of the African frontline states which spearheaded the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola.

Nyerere was even nicknamed by his fellow African heads of state as “OAU's minister of foreign affairs” because of his indefatigable campaign for African freedom and unity.

And Tanzania's contribution to the liberation struggle was widely acknowledged. As David Martin, a renowned British journalist who worked in Tanzania for ten years as deputy managing editor of the Tanganyika Standard – he also worked for the London Observer – and who knew Nyerere well as much as he did all the leaders of the African liberation movements based in Tanzania's capital Dar es salaam, stated:

“I arrived in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam as a journalist on 9 January 1964.

Three days later there was a revolution in Zanzibar by the African majority against the Arab minority put in power by the retreating British colonialists just one month earlier.

An African-driven union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar followed three months later and the country’s name was changed to Tanzania.

Despair, hate and humiliation had begun the painfully slow process of retreating.

Dar es Salaam in those days was the headquarters of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Liberation Committee. Living in the city were the leaders of the liberation movements of southern Africa such as the ebullient Eduardo Mondlane from Mozambique, more taciturn poet, Dr. Agostinho Neto, and a host of others. Nyerere was their beacon of hope.

He was uninhibited by the paranoid attitudes that gripped the east and west at the height of the Cold War. And although he was not adverse to using westerners to achieve his vision, he sought for the continent to have African solutions created by African people.

He did not tolerate fools and was a masterly media manager. He could go for months without seeing the press. But, when he had something to say, as he did in 1976 during two visits by the US Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, he astutely ensured that his version of events got across.

I remember one day sitting in his office questioning that a number of African countries had not paid their subscriptions to the OAU Liberation Committee Special Fund for the Liberation of Africa. He looked at me for some moments, thoughtfully chewing the inside corner of his mouth in his distinctive way.

Then, his decision made, he passed across a file swearing me secrecy as to its contents. It contained the amount that Tanzanians, then according to the United Nations the poorest people on earth, would directly and indirectly contribute that year to the liberation movements. I was astounded; the amount ran into millions of US dollars.

It was the practice among national leaders in those days to say that their countries did not have guerrilla bases. Now we know that Tanzania had many such bases providing training for most of the southern African guerrillas, who were then called ‘terrorists’ and who today are members of governments throughout the region....

Tanzania was also directly attacked from Mozambique by the Portuguese.

But, in turn, each of the white minorities in southern Africa fell to black majority political rule and Nyerere saw his vision for the continent finally realized on 27 April 1994 when apartheid formally ended in South Africa with the swearing in of a new black leadership.” - (David Martin, “Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere: Obituary,” Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), quoted by Godfrey Mwakikagile, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, Third Edition, New Africa Press, 2006, pp. 483 – 484).

Many black South Africans fled to Tanzania and other African countries and were welcomed with open arms as fellow Africans and as brothers and sisters. They were fed, given shelter and everything else they needed or whatever their hosts could afford.

Black South Africans were also given financial, material, moral and diplomatic support in their struggle against apartheid by fellow Africans in the independent African countries.

Now that they are free, many of them have forgotten all that. Or they have simply ignored it as if it was nothing. Yet, without the help they got from other African countries, black people in South Africa would not have won freedom when they did. Apartheid would probably have lasted much longer. It is very much possible they would still be suffering under apartheid today.

Africans from those countries are now paying another price in South Africa, losing their lives at the hands of fellow Africans for whom they sacrificed so much in order to help them win their freedom. They are not welcome in South Africa, although not all black South Africans feel that way.

But it is equally true that South Africa can not solve the problems of other African countries most of which are caused by bad leadership, forcing millions of Africans to flee their home countries in search of better life elsewhere. And, unfortunately for South Africa, that is where most of them choose to go because she is right there on the continent, unlike Europe and America which are beyond reach for most Africans fleeing poverty in their home countries, even risking their lives on the way in search of greener pastures.

The blame rests squarely on African leadership which thrives on corruption and tribalism, nepotism and tyranny, and which is equally notorious for gross mismanagement of the economy and outright incompetence. And most African leaders do everything they can to perpetuate themselves in office while doing nothing, in most cases absolutely nothing, for their people.

The inability to create employment for their people including opportunities for self-employment is one of the most tragic results of this rotten leadership. And it is rotten to core, forcing many Africans to flee their countries and go to South Africa – and elsewhere – to look for jobs they can't find in their own countries.

Many of them simply walk to South Africa even if they have to walk hundreds of miles, with many of them dying on the way, a lot of times from attacks by animals especially lions and even leopards. Some die from snake bites, diseases and other ailments. Others simply starve to death. Still, many of them survive the ordeal and make it to South Africa.

But when they get there, the reception they get is not always what they expected to get.

The attacks on African immigrants in South Africa are dire warning of things yet to come. The worst has not happened yet. They could escalate into a full bloodbath nationwide unless something is done to avert a probable catastrophe.

It may even be too late already. As the Sowetan, the biggest and most influential black newspaper in South Africa, bluntly stated in its 19 May 2008 edition: “Now it's war.”

The worst violence against black African immigrants took place in May 2008. It was on scale never seen before since the end of apartheid.

But there is no question that xenophobic attacks have taken place in many parts of the country through the years including the nation's capital Pretoria.

The attacks in Atteridgeville and Mamelodi near Pretoria occurred more than two months before the xenophobic violence of May 2008.

But other attacks took place before then, including one in which a Nigerian immigrant was brutally murdered in the streets of Pretoria some years before then simply because he was a foreigner.

Other attacks in May 2008 took place in Tembisa (Thembisa) which is part of Midrand; Alexandra north of Johannesburg in Sandton; Johannesburg; Actionville; Cleveland; Diepsloot; Zenzele settlement in Springs; Reiger Park in Boksburg; Soweto and other places before then.

And there were ominous signs that the wave of terror against black African immigrants would sweep across the country when it spread to other provinces besides Gauteng.

Attacks against the immigrants also took place in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal provinces.

Properties owned by Somalis were reduced to ashes in Mpumalanga Province, and some owned by Nigerians were destroyed in Durban in KwaZulu/Natal Province. According to a report in the Sowetan, on Wednesday, 21 May 2008, on the attacks on Nigerians and other foreigners in KwaZulu/Natal Province entitled “42 Dead, 16,000 Displaced by Xenophobia”:

“Violence has begun spreading for the first time outside Gauteng province - into KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.

Mpumalanga police said the shack-burning and looting targeted at foreigners began there on Tuesday, and in KwaZulu-Natal, police were monitoring Durban’s Dalton Road area after an attack on a Nigerian-owned tavern.

Constable Sibusiso Mbuli told Sapa on Wednesday that about 200 foreigners had sought refuge at Leslie police station on Tuesday night after tuckshops were looted there, and in Embalenhle....

KwaZulu-Natal’s premier, Sbu Ndebele, visited the Crippled Cock tavern on Durban’s Umbilo Road today, where he said that criminals wanted 'to clothe their criminality with xenophobia.'

The tavern was ransacked overnight by a mob who told the tavern owner and his staff — most of whom are also Nigerian — to 'go home'....

The attack on the tavern followed a local branch meeting of the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party) on Tuesday night and a standoff involving police on Wednesday morning as the mob confronted residents of the Khayalitsha Lodge hostel — a privately run hostel housing large numbers of foreign nationals.

On Wednesday morning (21 May 2008), after police had intervened and stopped the throwing of bottles, residents could be seen leaving the hostel carrying their worldly possessions.

As they left, residents from the Dalton Men’s hostel across the road hung out the windows and shouted abuse at the departing Zimbabweans, Malawians and Mozambicans.”

Mpumalanga borders Gauteng Province, and the violence which erupted in that province was directly linked to the xenophobic attacks in Gauteng. As reported by a South African newspaper, the Independent, in its edition of 22 May 2008, “Xenophobia Spills Over Into Mpumalanga”:

“The xenophobia in Gauteng spilled over into Mpumalanga on Wednesday.

'When we got to Extension 16 (of of Embalenhle), we found that two shops and a car belonging to a Somalian businessman had been burnt to ashes,' said Evander police spokesperson Constable Sibusiso Mbuli.

While police attended that scene, they were informed of violent outbreaks occurring in nearby Leslie and had to call for back-up to be sent there.

The Somalian businessman, Ahmed Ali, 26, and other foreigners were taken to Evander police station for their own safety.

"I don't know where to go now because I lost everything I have worked for since I came to the country four years ago," he said.

The only thing he could salvage was a fridge, which is with him at the police station.

'I'm lucky that I survived. I managed to escape when I heard them chanting violent songs at my gate. I ran outside and sought cover. I can't go back to Somalia because there is war and poverty there. It would be better if the South African government provided a piece of land on which foreigners could live in peace,' he said.

A Zimbabwean woman, Martha Sibanda, 26, has been in South Africa since 1993 selling hand-made table cloths to feed her family back in Zimbabwe. Her three-year-old daughter has a South African father and was born here.

'I don't see myself going back to Zimbabwe. My life is here in South Africa. I'd rather die of hunger here at the police station while waiting for the violence to stop,' said Sibanda.

Mbuli said seven suspects had been arrested in connection with the act of arson.

The suspects will appear in the Evander magistrate's court today on charges of arson, malicious damage to property, common assault and public violence.

'Most of the people involved in this whole mess are unemployed youth,' said Mbuli.

'They steal the foreigners' belongings and then sell them cheaply on the black market.'

He said the victims would be kept at the police station until the situation was calm. In Komatipoort, Mozambican Armando Matsinhe, 31, said he did not want to see any South Africans in Mozambique when he returns.

'We are going to make sure that they get the same treatment. I've left my job and lost two friends who have been killed,' he said.

Komatipoort police are patrolling the Hectorspruit and Komatipoort railway stations to ensure the safety of the Mozambicans before they take a taxi to the Lebombo border post.”

Even the capital Pretoria was not spared. Besides the attacks which took place in the informal settlement of Atteridgeville in the nation's capital, there were also attacks in Mabopane and Marabastad outside Pretoria.

Xenophobic violence was also unleashed in the townships of Gugulethu and Langa in Cape Town in the Western Cape Province and in some townships in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province hundreds of miles away from the Johannesburg area where it all started.

When the attacks were going on, some Zimbabweans and other black African immigrants in Cape Town said it could not happen in Cape Town since they got along just fine with the local people.

They were just deluding themselves. Within two days, violence erupted in Cape Town. As BBC Africa reported, “SA Violence Spread to Cape Town,” on Friday, 23 May 2008:

“Violence against foreigners in South Africa spread to Cape Town overnight with people assaulted and shops looted.

The attacks broke out after a meeting called to prevent anti-foreigner violence in the Dunoon township.

'Groups within the crowd started to loot shops owned by Zimbabweans and other foreigners,' police spokesman Billy Jones told AFP news agency....

More than 40 people have died and some 15,000 people have sought shelter since the violence initially flared up in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra almost two weeks ago.

There are fears that the unrest could have longer term consequences for the country.

Moeketski Mosola, head of South Africa Tourism, told the BBC the government is alarmed by the situation, especially as they are preparing to host the football World Cup in 2010.

'We are extremely concerned about the situation on the ground, you must remember that 67% of the tourists coming into South Africa are mainly African,' he told the BBC's World Tonight programme.

Cape Town is the hub of South Africa's tourism industry.

There have also been new attacks in Strand, east of Cape Town, Durban and North-West province, where three people, reportedly from Pakistan, were stabbed and dozens of Mozambican and Somali nationals displaced.

On Thursday 22 May 2008), troops were deployed to quell attacks - the first time soldiers have been used to stamp out unrest in South Africa since the 1994 end of apartheid....

'Some people were assaulted, but mostly shops were looted,' Mr Jones said.

A Nigerian shopkeeper told Die Burger newspaper that eight people stormed into his shop.

'They took everything, everything,' he said.

Thursday night's unrest (in Cape Town) has prompted some 500 people, including Somalis, Mozambicans and Nigerians, as well as Zimbabweans to flee their homes, some seeking refuge in police stations.

Cape Town first witnessed xenophobic attacks two years ago when the Somali community - especially those who owned shops - were targeted and some murdered.

Durban also witnessed unrest earlier this week....

Mozambique's president has urged his compatriots not to respond to the attacks.

His government has also mobilised emergency services normally used for natural disasters to cope with the exodus of an estimated 10,000 Mozambicans from South Africa.

The BBC's Karen Allen says there have been chaotic scenes and scuffles at a Johannesburg police station, as Mozambicans tried to scramble on board buses laid on by their embassy to take them home.

Some Zimbabweans are also going home, preferring to risk the violence there than stay in South Africa.

One Zimbabwean woman told the BBC she had decided to return home from Johannesburg after seeing a series of xenophobic attacks.

The 36-year-old woman said she had seen an armed gang douse a Mozambican immigrant with petrol and throw him into his burning shack.

'The screams of the burning Mozambican still haunt me. When I close my eyes to try to sleep, I see the man screaming for help. But no-one helps him,' she said.

'I have never seen such barbarism.'

In its weekly newsletter, the ruling party African National Congress (ANC) Youth League says the government has not done enough to stop 'this anarchy.'”

Police Superintendent Andre Traut in Cape Town also said shops were looted and burnt in Du Noon squatter settlement and in Kraaifontein outside Cape Town as well as the city's largest township, Khayelitsha, where an estimated one million people live.

The youth wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was right when it described the situation as anarchy.

The situation in many parts of the country which had been rocked by this kind of violence had indeed degenerated into anarchy during those dark days, clearly demonstrated by the inability and sometimes even the unwillingness by the police forces to stop the attacks.

The attacks in the Cape Province followed virtually the same pattern of violence that had erupted earlier in other provinces. Once violence starts in one place, it erupts in another, then another, and another.

In the Cape Province, attacks in Cape Town were followed by other acts of violence against the black African immigrants in other parts of the province. As reported by the Times, Johannesburg, 23 May 2008, “Threats of Xenophobic Attacks – Knysna”:

“Threats of xenophobic attacks in Knysna, in the Western Cape, sent foreigners fleeing the White Location township to seek refuge at the local police station yesterday.

Police spokesman Captain Malcolm Pojie said they had increased the police presence in the area after foreigners were threatened with violence.”

The threats were followed by violence against African immigrants in Knysna after some foreigners were attacked in Cape Town, the largest city in the province and the second-largest in the country after Johannesburg. According to the Times, 23 May 2008, “Violence Reaches Cape Town”:

“Anti-immigrant violence in South Africa has flared in the city of Cape Town for the first time, police said today, as troops and police appeared to quell the unrest in the hotspot of Johannesburg.

Police reported attacks against immigrants and foreign-owned shops in a slum area of picturesque Cape Town, a major draw for tourists which had so far been spared the mob violence seen in Johannesburg....

Police spokesman for the Cape Town area Billy Jones said a public meeting in the Du Noon slum area 20 kilometres north of the city degenerated into violence yesterday evening.

'Groups within the crowd started to loot shops owned by Zimbabweans and other foreigners,' he told AFP, saying 500 had since fled the area and were staying in community centres.

'Some people were assaulted, but mostly shops were looted.'

Police also reported pockets of overnight unrest in Durban in the KwaZulu Natal region and in North West province. Problems have also been seen in the central area of Free State....

The violence, which has done untold damage to South African’s reputation as the Rainbow Nation, is also taking its toll on the country’s economy.”

That was one of the first news reports saying xenophobic incidents had also occurred in the Free State Province, one of the last three – together with Limpopo Province and the Northern Cape Province – to join the rest in the wave of hate and terror against black African immigrants.

But the xenophobic hysteria and terror assumed another dimension when a large number of attackers also targeted fellow South Africans who were members of other tribes. The attackers who spearheaded the campaign in the Johannesburg area including the township of Alexandra were Zulu.

They told fellow South Africans who were members of other tribes to go back to their regions. And the attacks were well-orchestrated. They were not random acts of violence.

Among the victims were the Venda, Pedi and Shangaan, all South African ethnic groups. But the primary target was the foreign black African community. They were first attacked in Alexandra, a black township north of Johannesburg. As Nosimilo Ndlovu stated in a report in the Johannesburg Mail&Guardian, Friday, 16 May 2008, headlined, “''They Must Leave or Die'”:

“It started with community meetings about crime and taxis and ended in an orgy of xenophobic violence that tore one of Johannesburg's oldest townships apart.

In the days before mobs swept through Alexandra a meeting blamed foreigners for a recent spike in crime in the township and complained that the police were not taking action.

Tuesday May 6:

During a meeting residents threatened to take matters into their own hands and remove foreigners from the area, according to Alexandra Community Police Forum (ACPF) chairperson Thomas Sithole. Sithole said police assured residents they would deal with the issue.

Saturday May 10:

Then the renegade Alexandra Residents Association (ARA) held a meeting with taxi drivers to discuss concerns that foreigners were taking over the taxi industry.

Taxi drivers were unhappy about the growing number of foreigners working in the industry. They said foreigners were taking away their jobs and were willing to work for lower wages.

Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum, Sox Chikowero, who attended the meeting, says people accused Zimbaweans of driving crime in the area and "taking away our jobs and our women". Chikowero said it was agreed that non-nationals would be driven from the township.

Sunday May 11:

By nightfall mobs were rampaging through Alex.

Phumzile Sibanda, a young Zimbabwean woman, said she was asleep on Sunday night when a group of men stormed into her shack and demanded that she and her boyfriend pack their bags and leave. 'They beat us up and told us to make sure that when they return we are no longer here or they would kill us.'

Afraid and confused, Sibanda and her boyfriend ran to seek refuge with their South African neighbours. But the mob returned and found them again. "They knew where we were. When I saw them come in I was afraid for my life. They grabbed me and said they were going to rape me, and I could do nothing." Sibanda's neighbour pleaded with the gang not to rape her, saying that they were mistaken: she was the neighbour's daughter and not a foreigner. "That's when they let me go. I was lucky," said Sibanda.

In the violence that evening two people were killed -- one reportedly a local who refused to join the mob. Dozens were injured, women were raped and houses destroyed. Over the coming days, the toll would rise.

Monday May 12:

By afternoon the tension was palpable. Accompanied by police and sympathetic neighbours, Zimbabweans and other foreigners went to see what could be rescued from the piles of wood and broken glass that used to be their homes.

Women bravely gathered the remains of their cutlery, bedding and clothes.

In the background angry young men with bloodshot eyes and reeking of alcohol walked around swinging knobkieries, spears, golf clubs and other makeshift weapons.

They cursed the now homeless foreigners. 'You better be out of here by seven tonight or we will kill you,' said a young man holding two golf clubs and a bottle of beer. There was no reaction from the victims or the police escorting them.

By this time, the crisis had taken on a distinctly ethnic flavour. The area at the centre of the violence is known as Zulu territory, dominated by the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

As in the Eighties when township residents were pitted against hostel dwellers, the area around London Road and 5th Avenue had become a no-go area for outsiders.

A loudspeaker announced a meeting in the KwaMadala area near Nobuhle hostel, in the heart of IFP territory. Led by a police van, party officials arrived in a light commercial vehicle, promising to listen to the grievances of the people. They had been stung by accusations that the IFP had orchestrated the violence.

A crowd gathered, carrying golf clubs, sticks and other weapons, and followed the IFP leaders singing: 'Lelizwe elethu, aba hambe' (this country is ours - they [foreigners] should leave).

About 200 people gather in an open space between the hostel and informal settlement. IFP MP (Member of Parliament) Bongikosi Dlamini told the crowd his party is not behind the orgy of violence. 'As the IFP, we are here to make it clear that we condemn these attacks and are here to ask you not to go around attacking people in the IFP's name.'

But Dlamini was quick to add that the IFP understood the frustrations of the people 'as indeed the government has failed you, but you should not continue these attacks as opportunistic criminals will take advantage and you, as South Africans, would end up fighting against each other.'

Sam Thembe, a shopkeeper, told the MP: 'It hurts that they are leaving, as business people we gain from them, but they are criminals. Sometimes I close the shop late and I see them breaking into peoples houses, they should leave.'

A middle-aged resident agreed: 'Our brothers from Mozambique and Zimbabwe should go back home or else we pick up spears and guns …'

He was interrupted by residents lifting their weapons and shouting in unison: 'Ama kalanga awahambe noma afe.' (The foreigners must leave or die.)

Dlamini calmed the crowd, saying: 'As the IFP we understand your frustrations, however, our Constitution says South Africa is a South Africa for all, which means everyone including the foreigners are welcome.'

He adds: 'The IFP argued that the Constitution should, in fact, say South Africa is a South Africa for all that were born in it, however, the ANC, as usual, did not listen to us.'

As time goes on, the discussion gets hotter and hotter. The MP can offer nothing more than 'discussions.'

Many say Alex is the last place they expected this kind of violence to erupt. It is known as multi-cultural and multi-national, a melting pot where South Africans and foreigners from different race and ethnic groups have lived together for years. One life-long resident, 25-year-old Thandi Madlala, says she has always had Mozambican neighbours, 'and it's never been an issue.'

But fingers are being pointed at the ARA (Alexandra Residents Association), who were involved in the meeting that brought xenophobic hatred to the boil. The ARA is accused of orchestrating the violence and encouraging the idea that foreigners should be driven out.

Sithole of the community police forum said it was at the ARA meeting on Saturday that a decision was taken to 'drive foreigners away.'

He said the forum had had problems with the association before and said it had masqueraded as part of the ACPF in order to gain support from the community.

Sithole of the community police forum said it was at the ARA meeting on Saturday that a decision was taken to "drive foreigners away". He said the forum had had problems with the association before and said it had masqueraded as part of the ACPF in order to gain support from the community.

Chikowero from the Zimbabwean Diaspora Forum said the original intention of the meeting had been taxi-related. But, other issues had cropped up and a criminal element had hijacked the initiative for their own ends, looting, pillaging and rampaging through the township.

Thursday May 15:

By the afternoon residents were carting away doors and scrap metal from a ransacked warehouse where Zimbabweans and Mozambicans used to live. The body of a Mozambican had just been discovered, but it was starting to feel like no one is safe in the township. There were reports of gangs targeting Vendas, Shangaans and Xhosas, and there were fears of reprisals.

Thandazile Msimang (23), originally from KwaZulu-Natal, was refusing to listen to police who told her to pack up her belongings and leave for her own safety. 'I am not going anywhere. I belong here. I am from Nkandla.'”

Remarks by a member of parliament from the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Bongikosi Dlamini, did not help.

They could very well have been interpreted as tacit approval or encouragement of what some of the people of Alexandra were doing to drive foreigners out of their community and out of the country; especially when he said that his party, the IFP, wanted the South African constitution to explicitly stipulate that South Africa belonged only to those who were born in South Africa, although there is no guarantee the party meant including children of foreigners. But he clearly ruled out foreigners becoming South Africans even by naturalisation.

The people who carried out the attacks as well as their supporters falsely claimed and may be even believed that they were under siege, flooded or swamped by a wave of foreigners. And they developed a fortress mentality to justify the xenophobic campaign they orchestrated against the black African immigrants.

Their siege mentality was a product of the anger and resentment they harboured against the immigrants in their communities and in other parts of the country.

And all this anger and resentment – and hate – was bound to boil over at the slightest provocation including lying about foreigners simply because they did not want them in their country.

The result was bloodshed at the expense of black African immigrants although some black South Africans were also targeted in this vicious campaign.

The immigrants were stripped of everything except the clothes they had on and a few other belongings they could salvage or were able to carry away when they could; for example, just before the attacks when some of them were warned to leave – or die! As Percy Zvumoya stated in his report in the Mail&Guardian, 16 May 2008, “Death by Starvation or Butchery”:

“'Give me a one-way ticket back to Zimbabwe' is the chorus of the hundreds of displaced people huddled at the Alexandra police station, in fear of their lives.

The police station teems with scores of aid workers, journalists and displaced foreigners from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique.

The victims of the xenophobic attacks are dishevelled and dirty, having slept in the open at the police station since Sunday. Some have managed to rescue a bag or a bicycle, but most escaped with only the clothes on their bodies. Now they long to be among familiar people who speak familiar tongues.

For Knowledge Mutisi, a 21-year-old Zimbabwean, their ordeal started with a knock on the door late on Sunday.

He said a group of men barged into his shack and demanded money and cellphones from him and his friends before beating them up. As they fled 'a gun was fired and one of us was shot in the leg.'

They dare not go back, he says, sitting on a grey blanket handed out by the Red Cross.

Mutisi left Zimbabwe last year after the death of his parents, jumping the border to follow his uncle to Alexandra. Recurring droughts and the farm invasions had put an end to employment on the tea farms around Birchenough Bridge.

He is not sure what he will do now - a life of poverty in rural Zimbabwe is unbearable, but staying in South Africa seems like certain death.

There is a sense that if the choice is starvation or being butchered, they would rather die at home, where their ancestors are buried. 'Tell them we want transport. We want to go back home.'

Kholani Dube, who wears a Zion Christian Church cap, speaks in a weary voice. He has lost everything, but shows a surprising understanding of his attackers. 'We don't blame them, but they should realise that we are not fighting them. We are just trying to get by.'

Brothers Daniel and Gift Sithole, from Chipinge in eastern Zimbabwe, sit ashen-faced, scooping out baked beans from a can onto a piece of bread.

Gift removes his heavy woollen hat to reveal a head full of stitches. "They beat me with a metal rod," he says. His brother Daniel says they don't feel safe even at the police station, as mobs have come into the station and ordered them to leave. 'What's there to stop them from throwing a petrol bomb or something into this enclosure?' he asks. Daniel insists home - however hard - is where he wants to be.

But Sox Chikowero, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum, warns against rushing back to Zimbabwe. 'That's not a solution. You can't go back to Zimbabwe now,' he told the terrified group. 'You will be targets of the militias that the government is using to cow the opposition. A person who has come from South Africa will obviously be targeted.'”

But thousands of them insisted on going back to Zimbabwe. And they did.

And the attacks continued in the Johannesburg area when the victims of the violence were waiting to board buses (or even fly) back home – to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi and other parts of Africa. And they all feared they could be attacked anytime even at the shelters where they had sought refuge from the violence.

Among all the victims, Zimbabweans were probably in the most vulnerable position if they returned to their home country because of the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe.

But they had a choice: stay in South Africa and get killed or go back to Zimbabwe and suffer extreme hardship in a country whose economy had collapsed and possibly get killed for having left their home country, branded as “traitors” by the government and as supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The alternative was unthinkable. Yet life in South Africa had become intolerable. As Dickson Jere stated in his report in the Johannesburg Mail&Guardian, 14 May 2008, three days after the violence against black African immigrants erupted in Alexandra township:

“Having fled the spiralling post-election violence in his native Zimbabwe, Given Sithole never imagined he would now be fearing for his life in what he saw as the safety of neighbouring South Africa.

With tears dripping from his swollen right eye, Sithole recounts how he came to be among several hundreds of immigrants caught in recent xenophobic attacks in Alexandra, north of Johannesburg.

The attacks have left three people dead and several dozens injured since they broke out at the start of the week.

'I do not know what has befallen me,' said 25-year-old Sithole, who nearly lost his life in March after militias attacked him in the aftermath of the Zimbabwe elections for supporting the opposition.

Looking shaken and frail, Sithole has no kind words for the South Africans who had thought would provide him a safe haven after falling foul of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's hard-line supporters.

'I really thought life will be better here. These people are bad, they have no respect for fellow human beings,' he said.

Sithole is among the over 200 immigrants, temporarily sheltered at a local police station, after they were displaced in violent xenophobic attacks, which have become increasingly common in South Africa.

"We have just moved in to help these people. The situation is getting desperate," said Mathews Ntamote, a South African Red Cross official found distributing relief food to the displaced foreigners.

A gang of South African youths, armed with machetes and guns, were making the rounds in Alexandra, looking for foreigners whom they accused of crime and taking their jobs.

"They have a list of all foreigners and they are moving from door to door ...," said Jane Mauzi, a 46 year-old Mozambican who came to do business in South Africa two years ago.

'I just want to go back home,' she said, before breaking down in tears.

The violence in Alexandra is the latest chapter in a series of attacks on foreigners in South African townships, whose residents bear the brunt of an unemployment rate touching 40% and some of the worst levels of crime anywhere in the world.

Many locals are quick to blame the newcomers

'They should go back to their countries. They come to get our jobs here,' said taxi driver Sipho Zulu.

'Most companies in South Africa give jobs to foreigners. They believe foreigners work harder than South Africans.'

The bulk of the immigrants who have flooded South Africa in recent years are from neighbouring Zimbabwe. Three million are believed to have fled an economic meltdown under Mugabe characterised by 80% unemployment and the world's highest rate of inflation.

Anna Moyo, spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Exiles' Forum, said the attacks on foreigners were unfortunate, especially since black South African lived in neighbouring countries during apartheid without problems.

'They should learn to appreciate and co-exist with others. The South African government should take up this issue as a matter of urgency,' said Moyo.

Makwerekwere is a derogatory term widely used by South Africans to describe immigrants, but the government said it was doing everything possible to deal with the situation.

'It is a problem, but I would never define it as a crisis. A concern that we as government are very worried about,' said Charles Nqakula, Safety and Security Minister.

Last month, South African President Thabo Mbeki urged his countrymen to stop xenophobic attacks as foreigners continue to be killed and displaced by mobs who blame them for crime and unemployment.

'As South Africans, we should refuse to be part of the unnecessary attacks on innocent people merely because they happen to be foreigners,' the president said on the 14th anniversary of the country's first democratic elections after the fall of the racially oppressive apartheid regime.”

Besides the violence in Alexandra – where it all started in May 2008 as the latest wave of violence against foreigners – and other parts of Johannesburg, similar attacks occurred in other parts of the country, although the Xhosa and members of other tribes who had some conflicts with the Zulu in Alexandra also attacked foreigners; for example, in the Eastern Cape Province, the ethnic stronghold of the Xhosa where some members of the Xhosa ethnic group targeted black African immigrants.

The Xhosa, together with the Zulu, were also involved in attacking black foreigners in Johannesburg, Cape Town and other parts of the Western Cape Province.

There were also some members of some South African ethnic groups which straddle the border with Mozambique especially the Shangaan who were attacked in the xenophobic campaign.

If they were Shangaan from Mozambique, they were told to get out! Many were even attacked before they got the chance to leave South Africa and go back to Mozambique. And their attackers were proud of what they were doing.

They saw it as a second liberation of their country, this time from fellow Africans from other parts of Africa, after getting freedom from apartheid with the help of the same people they were now attacking and telling them to go back to their countries which sacrificed so much to free black South Africans. As Thembelihle Tshabalala and Monako Dibetle stated in their report, “Inside The Mob,” in the Mail&Guardian, 22 May 2008:

“Wandile Langa (20) says he is a proud xenophobe whose greatest satisfaction would be to see all 'Shangaans go back to where they came from.'

He means Mozambican Shangaans. 'It’s war I tell you; it’s South Africa versus Maputo.'

Langa is sitting in the back seat of our car as we speed through the rubble and ash from burnt tyres in the Ramaphosa informal settlement, near Reiger Park on the East Rand.

He is one of the machete-wielding, gun-toting youngsters who have taken over the shacktown’s maze of alleyways in a campaign of terror against makwerekwere.

On Wednesday evening (21 March 2008) Ramaphosa exploded in flames once again, bringing the total number of deaths since the spate of xenophobic attacks started to 42.

During the day they keep a low profile, hiding among the crowds and avoiding the attention of the large police contingent.

The battles begin at night. Langa says he and his friends have not slept since last Friday, 'when the war began.'

He explains that on May 6 it was discovered that two women residents had been 'killed by foreigners.' The community called a meeting to discuss the deaths and decided to act.

'We hadn’t planned to launch an attack on foreigners like the people in Alexandra did, but this incident made us very angry,' he said, clutching a hammer under his torn shirt.

Langa said Ramaphosa has always had a problem with makwerekwere, who are taking people’s jobs and reaping the benefits of 'our freedom.'

Every evening community members meet to share ideas on which homes to raid and burn. 'We go out together in groups, men and women, break into the Shangaans’ houses and we beat them and take what we want. If it’s a shack we burn it; if it’s a house we take the keys.

'These people own RDP houses, which some of us don’t even have,' he complained. He had moved into a house formerly owned by a Mozambican national.

'I’ve put a ‘for sale’ sign on it and I’ll sell it for R3,000.'

Langa claimed he could tell the difference between a Shangaan-speaker from Mozambique and one from Giyani in Limpopo. 'We just ask them Zulu words that any South African knows. If they get it wrong we hit them.'

Another lynch-mob leader, Thabang Mokolane (21), told the Mail & Guardian that foreigners are more criminally inclined than South Africans and they get away with crime because they can afford to pay chocho (bribes).

'We’re afraid to walk at night because we fear being mugged by these people,' said Mokolane. 'We’re also tired of white people thinking that we’re criminals when these people are worse than us.'

Mokolane said residents from the neighbouring Slovo squatter camp are rallying behind the Ramaphosa mobs and have joined forces with them in carrying out attacks.

The M&G (Mail&Guardian) also interviewed migrant workers living in the Madala hostel in Alexandra and the Wolhuter hostel in Jeppe, from where attacks on foreigners have been widely reported.

In Alexandra Shangaan, Venda and Pedi residents said they were attacked by “Zulus”. The same claim was made by immigrants assaulted in Jeppe and the Johannesburg CBD over the weekend. Jeppe Station commander Danie Louw told the M&G on Sunday that the violence appeared to be emanating from the George Goch, Wolhuter and Denver hostels.

Hostel indunas angrily denied that 'the Zulus are behind the xenophobic attacks.' But Duma Mncube, an induna at Madala, said that certain young hostel-dwellers might have taken matters into their own hands after being falsely accused.

Despite the denials the hostellers’ intense hatred of foreigners, coupled with their fortress mentality and sense of being victimised, was clear.

'South Africans have come out to express themselves against overcrowding and the loss of jobs because of the growing number of foreigners. It’s not a Zulu matter, it’s for all South Africans,' said Mncube.

Mncube said immigrants had taken over the jobs Zulus traditionally dominated, such as security. Many Zimbabweans had military experience, which gave them an advantage in that industry.

He also said that foreigners were moving into the taxi trade, where many Zulu speakers work. “But that does not mean they should be beaten up or killed,” he said.

Mncube hinted at the hostel-dwellers’ deep sense of grievance, saying their lives had not changed since the fall of apartheid and government upliftment projects had not borne fruit.

The Alexandra renewal project had not affected their living conditions and they were angry at being left out. 'We’re being treated like foreigners in our own country while the foreigners are having a nice time,' he said

Bheki Ntshangase, a Madala resident who works as a security guard, said the hostels forced people to live in isolation from the surrounding community. The Alexandra community regarded the hostel as an “island” and none of them dared venture into it.

'Zulus are treated like outcasts and the whole nation is undermining us. That’s why they say we’re behind the xenophobic attacks,' he said.

Jeppe hostel induna Simon Mvelase said hostel residents are perturbed that the media is defending foreigners while South African locals are strangers in their own country.

“We condemn the killings and beatings, but at the same time we condemn the government for allowing foreigners to do as they please in our land.

The people of South Africa have spoken, Zulu, Xhosa or Sotho. They are revolting against foreigners who are making their lives difficult by taking jobs and increasing crime and corruption.

'What makes the foreigner so lucky and special? How do they get the houses, the jobs, the cars and the businesses?' Mvelase raged.

He said the government should have woken up a long time ago. If the maize price increased and people lost their jobs to foreigners, there had to be a revolt.

'Our fellow South Africans are busy calling us hostel-dwellers. We aren’t -- we’re South African citizens like them.'

The toll as it stands

Since the xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township on May 11, violence has cut a swathe through Gauteng and spread to other provinces. The toll to date includes:

Outbreaks of xenophobic violence in at least eight places in Gauteng, including Bophelong in the Vaal Triangle, Kagiso on the West Rand, Johannesburg central, Thokoza, Primrose and Reiger Park on the East Rand.

Similar eruptions took place in Leslie in Mpumalanga, Umbilo in Durban, Brits in the North West and Durbanville in Cape Town.

Forty-two foreigners have been killed in Gauteng.

27 000 have been displaced by violence.

400 people have been arrested, according to police spokesperson Govindsamy Mariemuthoo.”

But that was not the end of it. The toll continued to climb in the next few days.

Many of these attacks which occurred after the vicious xenophobic campaign had taken place in the Johannesburg area may have been attributed to a copy-cat syndrome. But the core of this campaign was hatred of black foreigners by black South Africans who – wrongly – felt that they had been invaded by fellow Africans from other parts of Africa. It amounted to ethnic cleansing. And it is far from over.

The fact that it was methodical is even more frightening. As Nicole Johnston stated in her report in the Mail&Guardian, Johannesburg, 16 May 2008, “Copy-cat Ethnic Cleansing”:

“The wave of pogroms that saw foreigners fleeing Alexandra this week, clutching at the tattered remnants of their lives, should surprise no one. Xenophobic attacks have been growing in ferocity and frequency. In just the past three months Gauteng has witnessed a wave of attacks from Itereleng to Atteridgeville and from Alex to Diepsloot.

A pattern is emerging: a mob is organised, foreigners are beaten, raped and even killed. Their business are plundered and razed. They are driven out of their homes and their attackers move in, commandeering houses and possessions. As an ethnic cleansing strategy, it works remarkably well -- once the dust has settled and the media and the politicians have gone away, victims are too terrified and traumatised to move back into the area.

'The modus operandi is the same,' says Jody Kollapen, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission (HRC). There will be a wave of public condemnation and outrage, but there will also be a high level of fear and intimidation, preventing victims from returning. 'They [attackers] have made personal gains. And they have succeeded in what they set out to do so they just ride out the public storm.'

Kollapen also fears that there is a copy-cat element in the attacks.

On Wednesday afternoon Kollapen told the Mail & Guardian, "My concern is that there may be other Alexandras and Atteridgevilles waiting to erupt. In a depressed social climate it is easy to whip up feelings of exclusion and marginalisation and redirect these to non-nationals." Within hours of him saying this Diepsloot went up in flames, allegedly at the hands of the same people who organised the Alex attacks.

Scapegoats

Xenophobia may have been the spark that set Alex alight this week, but joblessness, crime, a lack of service delivery and soaring prices provided the kindling.

Loren Landau of the Forced Migration Studies programme at the University of the Witwatersrand points out that 'in some instances, local leaders have blamed foreigners to deflect criticism around the lack of jobs and service delivery.'

Lashing out at foreigners is rather like domestic violence, he says: 'A man who loses his job may go home and beat his wife. He'll feel better for five minutes, but in the morning his wife is bruised and he still doesn't have a job.'

No one denies that there is competition for scarce resources, but the pressure is being felt most by those with the least resilience to economic shocks -- the poorest of the poor.

Poor vs poor

The truth is that impoverished migrants, fleeing political or economic disaster, do not move into the suburbs. They move into already overcrowded squatter camps and townships, where survival is a daily struggle. 'Poor black people are directing their anger against other poor black people,' says Kollapen.

'An influx of people who have skills and are willing to work do represent competition for people in the township who -- because of Bantu education and apartheid -- are not equipped to compete,' says Landau.

But the scapegoating is often based on misconceptions and deliberate distortions, such as the claim that foreigners are stealing jobs, houses and even women. Most migrants can't enter formal employment without a South African identity book, so they often set up small businesses. This leads to jealousy when locals see these foreign businesses thriving. Similarly, the perception is that migrants are jumping the queue for houses.

'Many South Africans get RDP [reconstruction and development programme] houses and then rent them out to foreigners, which creates the impression that the foreigner has just been handed a house,' says Zonke Majodina of the HRC. In fact, migrants, who cannot open bank accounts or buy property, generally have no choice but to rent.

She adds that there is no doubt that corrupt housing officials take bribes to ensure people are pushed to the top of housing allocation lists and that the attacks highlight frustrations of residents don't feel they are seeing any results from the seven-year-old, billion-rand Alexandra Renewal Project.

The tendency to blame all crime on foreigners is also groundless as there is no hard evidence to suggest that migrants are disproportionately represented in the criminal class. "Alex has always been crime-ridden -- we cannot blame foreigners as if everyone else who lives there is an innocent," says Majodina.

And those South Africans who think this isn't their problem are deluding themselves says Dosso Ndessomin of the Coordinating Body for Refugee Communities. He says South Africans should be afraid - very afraid - particularly if political forces are manipulating ethnic differences for their own advantage.

Ndessomin is a refugee from Côte d'Ivoire and has lived through this before: 'It starts off as xenophobia and when they're finished dealing with the foreigners, they turn to tribalism. Trust me, that will be much, much worse than anything we are seeing now.'

Migration

'South Africa needs a more pragmatic migration policy that recognises both our dependence on foreign labour and the inability to stop migration without massive human rights abuses,' says Landau.

Kollapen concurs and says we need to address gaps in policy as well as do some straight talking about the causes of the problem. 'It's not an easy issue, but it does need to be addressed at some level. Arresting, detaining and deporting people is just not working,' he adds.

'How do we deal with large numbers of people who may not qualify for formal refugee status but who, on genuine humanitarian grounds, represent a larger question for government and for our society?'”

The xenophobic violence and anti-foreign sentiments among many black South Africans is also inextricably linked with one of the country's major and perennial problems which did not end with the end of apartheid as official policy. And that is racism.

Some people, especially leaders, described the attacks on black African immigrants simply as hooliganism or thuggery and not xenophobia. But it was far more than that.

This was organised terror, systematic violence, with a specific agenda, planned by some leaders at the local level and possibly even at the regional and national levels. And it was well-executed, terrorising the entire African immigrant community in South Africa.

In fact, there was evidence showing that meetings had been held in a number of communities by local leaders to plan and launch the attacks targeting black African immigrants.

And the outbreaks in Cape Town two weeks after the first attacks occurred in the township of Alexandra in Gauteng Province confirmed the fears of those who felt that the violence could spread throughout the country and become a national crisis and even a catastrophe.

It also clearly demonstrated the urgency of the situation and showed that resentment against the black African immigrants had always been there, bubbling under the surface, just waiting to explode, even in communities where they apparently lived in harmony with their South African neighbours.

According to a report in the Mail&Guardian, Friday, 23 May 2008, on the attacks in Cape Town which started the previous day, headlined “Migrant Attacks Spread to Cape Town”:

“Anti-immigrant violence has spread to Cape Town, where mobs attacked Somalis and Zimbabweans and looted their homes and shops, police said on Friday.

Hundreds of African migrants were evacuated overnight from a squatter camp near Cape Town, the hub of South Africa's prized tourism industry. Somali-owned shops also were looted in Knysna, a resort town on the south-western coast.

'We don't know the exact number of shops looted and burnt, but it's a lot,' said Billy Jones, senior superintendent with the Western Cape provincial police. He added that one Somali died overnight but it was unclear whether the death was linked to the attacks....

At least 42 people have been killed and more than 25,000 driven from their homes in 12 days of attacks by mobs that accuse African migrants of taking jobs and fuelling crime. More than 500 people have been arrested....

The attacks have also sent a chill through the business community.

Officials in the tourism industry, a cornerstone of the economy, are worried overseas visitors will avoid the country. A number of Western governments have issued travel warnings for South Africa, and tour companies report rising cancellations.

Nearly one million South Africans earn their living from tourism, which accounts for 8% of the country's GDP. The country is hoping to draw an additional half a million tourists for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

South Africa had attracted millions of African immigrants with the prospect of work in its booming economy and an immigration and asylum policy that was considered one of the most liberal in the world. That reputation is now in tatters.

Thousands of African migrants have chosen to return home.

Mozambique said more than 10,000 migrants and their families had left South Africa since the violence broke out, and officials in the Portuguese-speaking nation expected the number to swell in the coming days.

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday that officials in his Movement for Democratic Change would help arrange transportation for refugees who wanted to go home to Zimbabwe, which is mired in a deep economic crisis....

There are an estimated three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, making them the biggest immigrant group.”

And in another report in the same newspaper on the same day on the violence that spread elsewhere in other parts of the country entitled “'Deliberate Effort' Behind Attacks”:

“More shops were looted in Lwandle township near Strand, north of Cape Town, and Knysna....

Authorities said a Malawian man was shot in Durban overnight and three other foreigners were stabbed in North West.

Police expect more attacks over the weekend and said they would seek additional assistance from the military if necessary....

Mozambique said that nearly 13,000 migrants and their families had left South Africa since the violence broke out.

There are an estimated three million migrants fleeing Zimbabwe's economic collapse, making them the biggest group among about five million immigrants in a country of 50-million people.

Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) on Friday expressed deep concern about the wave of attacks against foreigners.

'The UNHCR remains deeply concerned about the xenophobic attacks against foreigners in South Africa, including refugees and asylum-seekers who fled to South Africa seeking protection from persecution in their own countries,' the agency's spokesperson, Jennifer Pagonis, told journalists in Geneva....

Meanwhile, Malawi said on Friday it would help its citizens flee violence against foreigners in South Africa....'All Malawians willing to return home will be evacuated,' Ben Mbewe, foreign affairs principal secretary, said in a statement.”

Just like Mozambique, Malawi made a concerted effort to evacuate its citizens from South Africa. According to the Mail&Guardian, Friday, 23 May 2008, in one of its main stories, “South Africa's Stature Battered by Migrant Killings”:

“The Malawian government announced on Friday it had begun helping to evacuate 850 of its citizens.

'More than 850 Malawians have been affected by the current violence. All Malawians willing to return home will be evacuated,' Ben Mbewe, Foreign Affairs principal secretary said in a statement.

He confirmed that a Malawian citizen had been shot dead in Durban and said a task force had been set up to coordinate the evacuation. The first batch of people would be home this weekend.

'The government will do everything possible to ease the plight of affected Malawians,' he said.

Mbewe said hundreds of Malawians had camped at police stations. About 850 Malawians and 3,000 other immigrants were being sheltered in Johannesburg, he said.

Embassy officials were visiting to check if they were any Malawians hospitalised and to offer help.

Malawi's Foreign Minister Joyce Banda flew to South Africa on Sunday where she was briefed by the country's embassy officials.

Hundreds of Malawians have flocked to South Africa in recent years seeking employment.

Mozambique's Deputy Interior Minister Jose Mandra said on Friday at least 23 Mozambican nationals had been killed.

To cope with the tide of returning migrants, the government of President Armando Guebuza has reactivated the National Operative Emergency Centre (CENOE), which deals primarily with disasters.

Foreign Affairs Minister Oldemiro Baloi said CENOE would deal with the situation in an integrated manner to avoid 'opening wounds that are hard to heal later.'

The returnees are being assessed at the border. Some are directed to temporary accommodation centres for food and medical assistance while others are sent home.

Immigration authorities say that more than 10,000 Mozambicans have returned home from South Africa in recent days.

The Mozambican government has laid on buses to fetch its citizens from makeshift camps for the displaced erected in police stations and civic centres around Johannesburg.”

The Mozambican government said it was expecting an influx of up to 15,000 people or more from South Africa within days. In fact, by Saturday, 24 May 2008, more than 15,300 Mozambicans had returned to their country, according to reports on the same day by Mozambique's state-owned media. And the government declared a state of emergency on 22 May 2008 to handle the crisis.

Mozambique's minister of foreign affairs, Oldemiro Baloi, predicted an “exodus,” with thousands - possibly tens of thousands - of Mozambicans flooding across the border as they fled the violence in South Africa.

At least 50 people had been killed by Saturday, up from 42 earlier.

It was reported on Monday, 26 May 2008, that the death toll had reached 56 and more than 30,000 black immigrants had been displaced from their homes.

It was also on the same day that Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the xenophobic violence against foreign nationals has been brought under control. He also said 1,384 suspects had been arrested.

But there was no guarantee that the violence was really over, a wave of terror in which thousands of homes belonging to black African immigrants had also been destroyed, and hundreds of shops and other businesses had been looted and burnt down. As Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils conceded on 26 May 2008, just because the situation was under control did not mean that sporadic attacks could not still take place.

The attacks also occurred in the North West Province during the same period in May 2008 when they first erupted in Gauteng Province, forcing black African immigrants to flee to police stations for security. And when the violence spread to Cape Town on Thursday, 22 May 2008, more attacks were reported in the North West Province on the same day. According to The Times, Johannesburg, 23 May 2008, “More Xenophobic Attacks in North West”:

“Three foreigners were stabbed in the North West province last night as an angry mob looted shops and set vehicles alight, police said today.

Superintendent Lesego Metsi said more than 100 people were given shelter by the police while at least 15 people were arrested for public violence in the North West....[He added] that the police were considering calling for reinforcements in the province.

'We are stretching our resources and as soon as the police arrive at a scene, they get reports of another incident somewhere else. I think we will consider reinforcements. The police are patrolling the areas to make sure they [foreigners] are safe from these hooligans. Let’s hope we won’t have more of this.'

In Kokosi township near Fochville, two Pakistanis were stabbed and their bakkie was set alight. One of the injured men is still in hospital and the other has been discharged.

In the same township, four shops belonging to Pakistanis were broken into. Also, a spaza shop owned by a Mozambican man was burnt down.

At Mothutlung village near Brits, a 200-strong mob looted spaza shops belonging to Mozambicans and the police had to escort two Somalians to safety.

'Fifteen people were arrested for public violence,' said Metsi.

More violence occurred in Ipelegeng township near Schweizer Reneke, where a man was stabbed with a sharp instrument and a South African woman was pepper sprayed because she worked for a Bangladeshi.

Shops belonging to Pakistanis and Mozambicans were looted at Lethlabile near Brits where South Africans and Zimbabweans also clashed during the night.”

In the attacks a few days earlier in the North West Province, shops and other property belonging to black African immigrants were looted and burned. They were left with nothing and were forced to sleep at police stations before boarding buses back home to their countries of origin.

South Africa has nine provinces. And the violence erupted in at least six provinces: Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu/Natal, North West, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape.

But there was no guarantee that black African immigrants would be safe in the remaining three provinces of the Northern Cape, the Free State, and Limpopo during that dark period in the history of post-apartheid South Africa which will always be remembered across the continent and elsewhere for the vicious attacks and brutal murders of black foreigners in the country, killed by black South Africans.

Any or all the three provinces could explode anytime. None was immune from xenophobic attacks.

And that is exactly what happened. Limpopo Province was hit next within two days during which the violence spread to other provinces. According to the Sowetan, 23 May 2008, in its report headlined “Limpopo Cops Arrest 11 for Race Attack”:

“Eleven people have been arrested in Limpopo province after an attack on foreigners, the first sign of racist violence spreading to the northernmost province.

Police said Friday a Mozambican man was stabbed and assaulted in the attack on the homes of immigrants.

'It is alleged that a group of people approached quarters rented by foreigners and pelted the rooms with stones,' provincial police spokeswoman Superintendent Ronel Otto said in a statement.

'They broke down the doors and entered the rooms, demanding money. A 28-year-old man from Mozambique was assaulted and stabbed with a knife in the shoulder.

Otto said the suspects, who also set fire to three rooms, had been arrested for attempted murder, armed robbery and malicious damage to property.

This is the first incident of anti-immigrant violence sweeping the country, to occur in Limpopo, leaving only two of the country’s provinces, the Eastern and Northern Cape, unaffected.

Otto said 81 foreigners from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, were being housed in safety at the local police station.

At least 42 have been killed, more than 500 arrested and 16,000 displaced in the province of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, since unrest broke out 12 days ago.”

There were other incidents of xenophobic attacks in Limpopo Province and in the remaining two provinces: Northern Cape and Orange Free State.

The entire country had been covered, engulfed in a wave of hate and terror against black African immigrants many of whom had fled from the same kind of violence and other forms of strife in their home countries, only to find out that they weren't welcome in South Africa.

It is a shame and such a tragedy that Africans end up as refugees in Africa, of all places, their homeland.

The attacks in KwaZulu/Natal Province assumed another dimension in the sense that this is a Zulu stronghold and all that it entails in terms of ethnic rivalries even within the context of South Africa.

But other South Africans who participated in the xenophobic war and who were members of other ethnic groups were equally motivated and mobilised forces with the Zulu to attack black African immigrants in KwaZulu/Natal; although the attacks in this province also underscored the political rivalries between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which rules KwaZulu/Natal. The antagonism has been going on since the early 1990s when apartheid was officially coming to an end.

The attacks in KwaZulu/Natal which sparked the dispute between the ANC and the IFP concerning the xenophobic attacks had to do with the violence that was unleashed against some Nigerians and their properties in Durban, the largest city in KwaZulu/Natal Province. According to a news report in the Independent, Thursday, 22 May 2008, entitled “IFP, ANC Row Over Tavern Attack”:

“The KwaZulu-Natal ANC government on Wednesday pinned the blame for Tuesday night's xenophobic attack on a group of Nigerians at a pub in Umbilo, Durban, squarely on the IFP. However, this incensed the IFP which accused the ANC of political point-scoring.

On Wednesday, KZN Premier S'bu Ndebele and community safety and liaison MEC Bheki Cele made it clear that the tavern attack - in which a large group of axe- and gun-wielding men had looted the place and attacked only Nigerians - was the only recognised incident of xenophobia in the province.

They said the attack was carried out by members of the IFP from the nearby Dalton hostel, who had marched to the tavern after a meeting.

The group also stoned a nearby building housing hundreds of foreigners and warned them to leave South Africa. On Wednesday many of the building's inhabitants had packed their belongings and moved out.

'Without any shadow of doubt this one (attack) was (the responsibility of the) IFP,' said Cele.

However, the IFP's provincial chairperson, Mntomuhle Khawula, said that Cele's comments were 'immature and irresponsible.'

'Mr Cele... should be more cautious about his utterances lest he adds fuel to a fire,' said Khawula.

The issue of xenophobia has dominated headlines over the past two weeks after gangs went on the rampage in townships in Gauteng, killing, looting and destroying the property of foreigners.

Khawula said the Dalton hostel was a multiparty residence. It was therefore irresponsible to insinuate specific party political affiliation without any knowledge of the identity of the attackers.

Ndebele said the provincial government would not brush off the attack as a single incident.

'That's why we are here and we are going to be here in full force. As MEC Cele is saying, we are not going to play because any fool can start this thing (xenophobic attacks), but to stop it is so difficult.'

Cele said the province had experienced terrible violence in the past and knew what it was like when people's homes were burnt down.

'... people of KZN will no longer accept that thing (violence) because they know they will suffer. The experience of peace is what we will use,' he said.

Cele said there were no flashpoints in the province at this point but police were on standby and they would not hesitate to call in the defence force if the situation warranted that step.

Ndebele went into the tavern to examine the damage wrought in the attack. A broken television stood on a dustbin and a glass wall at the entrance was shattered.

'We are scared. They must tell us to go so we can sell our properties and business and leave peacefully. They must not catch us unaware,' Christopher Iheukwumere, the tavern owner, said on Wednesday.

Ndebele urged him not to do so, promising to "stamp out" the problem.

He and Cele were adamant that the xenophobia experienced in Gauteng had not taken root in this province.

The provincial cabinet said: 'The security forces reported that in KZN there have not been such attacks as experienced in Gauteng province.'”

There was also another factor that came into play during the violent xenophobic campaign that was waged against the black African immigrants in different parts of South Africa in May 2008. That was the Zuma factor.

It had an ethnic dimension, Zulu, but it was also national in scope because of the appeal Jacob Zuma, president of the ruling African National Congress, had among many poor South Africans who saw him as their saviour if he were to become president of South Africa in 2009, as he was widely expected to be.

Despite his professions to the contrary, Jacob Zuma had reportedly made it very clear to his supporters, even if in an indirect way, that he did not want foreigners in South Africa who compete for jobs with South Africans, especially the poor. And he had not been known to take a firm stand against xenophobic attacks on black African immigrants in the past anymore than President Mbeki and other national leaders had.

Zuma's favourite song during the liberation struggle against apartheid, Umshini Wami ('Give Me my Machine Gun'), became the “national anthem” for those who were engaged in the xenophobic campaign against the immigrants from other parts of Africa.

All that fuelled anti-foreign sentiments among many South Africans of all classes including the middle-class transcending ethnic and racial lines. Many of them saw this as a national cause worthy of “patriotic” support to keep South Africa for South Africans.

The attackers also had a precedent to cite. They had not been punished in the past for attacking black African immigrants besides getting a slap on the wrist. So why should they worry now?

As the country was preparing for the presidential election to be held in 2009, there was no question that the Zuma factor would remain a prime determinant in the xenophobic campaign which has always been inextricably linked with national politics in the South African context. And it will continue to be exploited by unscrupulous politicians in pursuit of their goals. As Mandy Rossouw stated in his report in the Mail&Guardian, Johannesburg, 24 May 2008, entitled “The Zuma Factor”:

“Jacob Zuma’s signature tune, Umshini Wam’, has become the soundtrack for the xenophobic upsurge in Gauteng.

This despite Zuma’s insistence that he does not condone moves to force Zimbabweans and other non-nationals out of the townships and South Africa.

Some victims also see a Zuma factor in the violence: one listener told 702 Eyewitness news this week that Zuma was to blame for the current spate of xenophobic attacks. 'When he was campaigning to become president of the ANC, he said he would get rid of all the foreigners,' the caller said.

In unrest-hit Kya Sands in Johannesburg a Zulu-speaking member of a group planning attacks on foreigners told the Mail & Guardian: 'Tell Jacob Zuma to tell Mugabe to come and get his people.'

In his only public appearance since the attacks began Zuma told a crowd in Pretoria last week: 'Umshini wam’ belongs to the ANC. Who are these people abusing this song while they are doing wrong things? They are abusing the names of ANC leaders in the process.'

Zuma was in London this week attending the graduation ceremony of his daughter, Msholozi, and will later visit the Elysées Palace in Paris to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

ANC observers said Umshini Wam’ is a song of revolt and the xenophobic attackers believe they are in revolt against President Thabo Mbeki’s administration. There is a perception that Zuma is more sympathetic to the plight of ordinary South Africans and understands the threat foreigners allegedly pose to their livelihoods.

Mpilo Shange-Buthane, advocacy officer with the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa, said xenophobic attacks “in Zuma’s name” increased after he was elected ANC president at the party’s Polokwane conference. “Ordinary people in the street have been saying that when he comes into power all foreigners will be chased out of the country. The man in the street sees Zuma as one of them, while they see the current president [Mbeki] as distant,” Shange-Buthane said.

Some wanted Zuma to address them to allay fears about the influx of non-South Africans. 'In Mamelodi they said ‘bring him’, people believe in him. They believe he will support their cause.'

Shange-Buthane said when foreigners were attacked in Delmas, Mpumalanga, last October, the swift response of the police and other agencies created the impression that attacks were a surefire way of attracting government attention.

There is also a perception that, because no one was brought to book for the attacks, it is safe to carry them out. 'No one is sent to jail. If they are, they are out of jail and back in the community the next day -- no one will hold them accountable.'

The Zuma-Mbeki dynamic also appears to have infected the South African Police Service. When the Central Methodist Church was raided by police earlier this year, they allegedly asked refugees to produce asylum-seeker permits.

When they did, they were told the documents were 'Mbeki papers' and therefore not acceptable, said Loren Landau, director of the forced migration programme at Wits University.

Shange-Buthane argues that the language leaders use to describe the attacks fails to convey condemnation. 'Zuma should speak more and convey a message about this constantly, not just once in a while. He should speak to people in Zulu to get the message across.'

ANC national executive committee member Winnie Madikizela-Mandela stepped into the leadership vacuum this week. In tearful television interviews she apologised to foreigners and warned commuters to avoid their normal routes because the ANC had intelligence that the attacks would spread to the trains.

A resident of Madala hostel in Alexandra this week said that ordinary people felt a powerful sense of newfound confidence since Zuma’s rise to power, particularly Zulu-speakers. Said security guard Bhekizitha Ntshangase: 'There is nothing we can say these days because everybody says ‘siyaphapha’ [we’re so confident] because we know that Zuma is going to become the president.'”

The toxic politics of ethnicity were a factor in the attacks as many Zulus saw themselves as the new “masters” of South Africa with the rise of Jacob Zuma to power, virtually guaranteeing that he would be the next president of South Africa and the most powerful Zulu leader since the end of apartheid.

The Zulu were also responsible for some of the most vicious attacks against black African immigrants during the dark days of May 2008.

There's no question that the xenophobic violence was the worst in the history of South Africa in the post-apartheid era.

And it all took place in a matter of days, only a few days, in May 2008. And it achieved its purpose even if on a limited scale. As one of South Africa's leading newspapers, The Times, Johannesburg, stated in one of its main stories on 22 May 2008, “Foreigners Scramble to Leave South Africa:”

“Johannesburg has seen an exodus of foreigners fleeing the rampant xenophobic violence in its townships and informal settlements.

The number of buses transporting foreigners had more than doubled in some areas of the CBD (Central Business District) by yesterday afternoon....One driver, who had just returned from Mutare in Zimbabwe, said: 'We have been quite busy and it is frustrating when you get to the border because there are a lot of buses that need to be processed'....

Officials at the Johannesburg bus terminus had tightened security at the gates, fearing attacks on foreigners who sleep there overnight while waiting to catch the early-morning bus....

Some hawkers from neighbouring countries, who regularly come to South Africa to do their shopping, said that they were now too afraid to leave the depot. 'It’s risky, but we have to take a chance,' said Yvonne Kadungure, a hawker from Bulawayo.”

Within days, tens of thousands of foreigners made plans to leave South Africa. More than 9,000 from Mozambique alone were headed towards the border, a wave of human misery the authorities at the Mozambican border were hard-pressed to cope with, but which they had to handle since it was their fellow countrymen and women coming back home, kicked out of a country for which they sacrificed so much to help liberate.

By Friday, 23 May 2008, more than 13,000 Mozambicans had left South Africa and returned to their home country.

And there was no guarantee that the xenophobic attacks would stop. Many black South Africans insisted that immigrants from other African countries must leave South Africa. As one of South African newspapers, the Independent, 22 May 2008, stated in its report, “Is Gauteng Really Quiet?:

“Reports indicate that renewed violence had broken out in the Ramaphosa informal settlement, outside Reiger Park on Gauteng's East Rand on Thursday....

The xenophobic attacks broke out in the Alexandra township last Sunday and have since spread across the province and now into Mpumalanga, the North West and KwaZulu-Natal.

While the situation in Alexandra was calm, it was evident that the flame which had been ignited in the township had not yet been extinguished.

Resident Florah Khwerana said: 'People are tired, this is not going to stop now.'

She said government and dignitaries who visited the township in the wake of the violence and condemned the violence were making the situation worse.

'They are living the good life... they don't know how we live. Its like the government is against its own people and this is making us more angry,' she said.

Khwerana said while the violent nature of the attacks were wrong, residents were very angry.

'How can everyone provide food at the police station for them and here there are our own people hungry. They don't provide for their own.'

Karabo Mapetho agreed that the violence was wrong, but she too wanted foreigners to return to their homes.

'This fight will never be over until they go home,' she said.

Mapetho said foreigners were viewed as criminals by the local community and this was the main reason they had to leave. They also took jobs which could potentially be filled by South Africans.”

The exodus of black African immigrants from South Africa was one of the saddest chapters in the history of the country and indeed of the entire continent in the post-colonial era.

It was also a blow to Pan-African solidarity.

Mozambicans were the first to leave in massive numbers with the help of their government. According to a report from Mozambique's capital Maputo published in the Independent, Wednesday, 21 May 2008, entitled “Thousands of Mozambicans Return Home”:

“Nearly 9,000 Mozambique nationals have crossed the border from South Africa, fleeing the xenophobic violence that left at least 24 migrants dead, eight of them from Mozambique, officials said Wednesday.

'We are having hectic moments with the return of these people. On Monday we registered 2,911 returnees, on Tuesday 2,725 and today 3,275,' said Leonardo Boby, Deputy National Director of Migration.

Boby said many of the new arrivals had lost most of their possessions, following attacks by South African youths claiming the migrants were committing crimes and depriving them of jobs.

According to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the repatriation of the Mozambique citizens was sponsored by the government, which also brought back the bodies of four of those who died for burial.”

Zimbabweans would have done the same thing, board buses in massive numbers like Mozambicans did, but they did not get any help from their government because of the political situation in their country which had forced them to leave and seek shelter and jobs in neighbouring South Africa.

But they still left in very large numbers. By 22 May 2008, Zimbabwean groups and their supporters including the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party in Zimbabwe led by Morgan Tsvangirai, had mobilised hundreds of buses to take Zimbabweans back home.

One of the organisers, Chester Gumbo, an MDC leader, was quoted by the Independent, 22 May 2008, in a story healined, “Refugee Crisis Grows,” telling Zimbabweans at a refugee camp in Johannesburg:

“We are here to tell you that the president (Morgan Tsvangirai) will be coming to meet you and we have organised 1,000 buses to take you back home. It is time for change in Zimbabwe. People are not happy here, so we are making a plan for them to go back home if they want to.”

The victims described the terror they went through. It was hell. And many of them vowed never to return to South Africa.

According to a report by Daniel Howden and Ian Evans in Cape Town – where more than 10,000 African immigrants had been displaced by the violence – which was published in a British news paper, The Independent, Saturday, 24 May 2008, and headlined “Migrants Flee South Africa as Wave of Violence Spreads to Cape Town”:

“The wave of xenophobic violence that has convulsed South Africa reached Cape Town yesterday with mobs looting shops and immigrants forced to flee a squatter camp which came under attack on the outskirts of the city.

At the same time neighbouring Mozambique declared a state of emergency to help its citizens fleeing the attacks, warning the "exodus will worsen" as thousands are still housed in makeshift camps awaiting transport back home....

The crisis has confronted many of South Africa's estimated five million immigrants with some appalling dilemmas....

Voices of the victims

Justin:

'When I go out I have to be very cautious, not stay anywhere a long time. I pay attention to what is happening around me.

I don't talk to anyone and not look at them in case they know I am Zimbabwean and want to attack me.

We have talked about leaving because of the killings. It is very worrying but for the moment we are staying. You have to understand what is happening back home. Things are bad there. We have no option but to stay.

I resigned from my job in Zimbabwe to come here to start a new life. We have parents back home to take care of. If I went back, I could not get a job with the government for two years and I would be unemployed and destitute.

I don't want to be unemployed – but if the worst comes to the worst here, our lives are more important and we would go. We won't be killed in Zimbabwe.'

Thabiso:

'I was awoken by the sound of screaming on Monday. A shack belonging to a Mozambican immigrant had been set alight. He tried to escape the fire. But the residents were armed with all sorts of weapons and AK-47 rifles. They shouted, 'Umbambe engabaleki', which means 'Don't let him run away' in Zulu.

The mob caught up with him, doused him with petrol and threw him back into the burning shack. I have never seen such barbarism. I cannot stand this kind of life.

Some other Zimbabweans and I ran to take shelter in a shack owned by a South African woman. Other residents, who had seen us taking refuge followed, shouting, 'Where are the foreigners?' They were armed with sticks and knives. The owner told the attackers we were South Africans. What saved us was that we could speak Zulu.'

Nyiko:

Nyiko Ngobeni of Chikwalakwala, Mozambique, told the CAJ news agency how he witnessed the killing of three of his best friends:

'I am experiencing nightmares every day now. Each time I close my eyes, I see my three friends being butchered in cold blood. The four of us were asleep when some thugs started attacking us. I survived through faking death. I smeared my friend's blood on my chest, mouth and nose, to fool them. They only left after being convinced we were all dead. I'm not going to risk my life again. South Africa was good for us, but I will never set my foot in Johannesburg again. I now hate South Africans.”

The xenophobic attacks in different part of the country were tragic enough and tarnished South Africa's image as a nation whose unity was forged on the anvil of diversity; hence its claim as “the rainbow nation.”

But just as tragic, and in spite of all the official condemnation of the attacks, was the government's response. The government was slow to respond. It did not want to respond. And it waited until it was too late to save lives. Had it responded right away, the lives that were lost could have been saved; at least most of them.

In fact the government itself, after 10 days of violence, admitted that it was aware of a potential disaster resulting from anti-immigrant sentiments and that such hostility would explode into violence.

Still, it did nothing in advance to avert this catastrophe and conceded its failure to do so only after it came under severe criticism from many quarters after the violence erupted, wreaking havoc in black African immigrant communities. The immigrants were helpless, hunted like wild animals, feeing for their lives to nowhere. As the Mail&Guardian, Saturday, 24 May 2008, reported, “Hunted by Gangs, Migrants Flee Flames”:

“George Mhanda came to Johannesburg to feed his family, struggling to eat under Robert Mugabe's derelict rule. The Zimbabwean mechanic found a job in a local garage and a room in a small house in Tembisa township, and sent cash home every month.

This week he fled the house ahead of a baying mob hunting down African immigrants, and made for the sanctuary of the Central Methodist Church in the heart of Johannesburg. He thinks his job is gone but now his priority is just to survive. At night he arms himself with a small pile of bricks for defence against the hostile mobs roaming outside, and settles down to sleep among hundreds of other unwelcome Africans on a flight of stairs in the church.

Mhanda cannot quite believe it has come to this. He had heard of such things in Rwanda and Kenya, of the killers going door to door in search of those who are different. But he never imagined it in Johannesburg, one of the most diverse and cosmopolitan cities on the continent and a beacon for immigrants.

'There's crime here, we all know that. But people come from all over to Johannesburg. It's that kind of city, not just a South African city but an African city. I can't understand it," he said. "Now maybe I will have to go back to Zimbabwe. I will wait a few days and see what happens but perhaps it is worse to be here than there.'

South Africa's bloodletting is a long way from the ethnic killings of Rwanda and Kenya. But at least 43 people have been murdered and tens of thousands forced from their homes as mobs hunted down African immigrants in a dozen Johannesburg suburbs and satellite townships. With it has come looting and rape.

Thousands of immigrants are fleeing home. About 15,000 Mozambicans crossed the border back to their country on Thursday alone. Others packed Johannesburg's bus and train stations looking for a way out. Many thousands are crammed into police compounds and community halls.

More than 2,000 immigrants, mostly Zimbabweans, are sheltering at the Central Methodist Church. They fill every space, sleeping on the pews, in the corridors, on the stairs. About a third are women and children. Makeshift defensive weapons are everywhere -- bricks, wood from broken chairs, metal bars.

There were skirmishes around the church as mobs attacked the refugees in recent days, and plenty of threats and insults from passersby, before the police parked a couple of cars outside. In one of the attacks a deaf-mute man who did not hear the warnings of an attack was beaten around the head, leaving a gash down to his skull.

Now the violence is spreading across the country to Cape Town, Durban and the Free State (Province).

Some of the scenes in the townships and squatter camps were disturbingly reminiscent of hatred seen elsewhere.

The mob that drove Mhanda from his home consisted of hundreds of young men armed with machetes, spears, knobkerries and metal pipes fashioned to look like guns. They danced their way through Tembisa in scenes evocative of the bloody township wars when rival black political groups competed for power with the twilight of apartheid in the early 1990s.

'There was hatred in their eyes,' said Mhanda. 'They were shouting things in Zulu. I didn't understand but I knew what they wanted to do, to kill the foreigners. It was very frightening. The people in the street told me to run. They said that if those boys caught me I would be dead for sure.'

Patrols

Two foreigners were murdered the night that Mhanda fled and scores of shacks burned or looted. In other places the victims have been burned alive, or chopped into pieces.

The attacks mostly come at night. Sometimes the mobs know where the foreign families live but if they are in doubt they haul them out of their beds and ask a simple question in Zulu, the lingua franca of the townships. Lack of comprehension is dangerous.

The scenes in Tembisa have resulted in something else not seen since the end of apartheid -- South African soldiers patrolling the townships.

A Somali was killed on Friday when a mob in Du Noon in Cape Town attacked shacks and looted shops, and pelted foreigners with rocks and bottles. The police took about 500 immigrants to the protection of a police station.

Du Noon residents said they wanted all the foreigners out.

'We want them to leave by Sunday,' Nonkululeko Sarlana told the South African Press Association.

Moses Ndabihawenimana and his two brothers fled Burundi two years ago after their parents were murdered there. Now he fears a similar fate in South Africa. 'This is war. They are going to kill us,' he said.

The church's bishop, Paul Verryn, said ordinary South Africans had grown hostile to African immigrants as Zimbabweans flooded into the country. By some estimates there are three million Zimbabweans in South Africa and about two million other African immigrants.

'The numbers here created anxiety,' he said. 'You can't get away from the fact that some of them are very educated with a substantial work ethic -- the Zimbabweans in particular. This is true of refugees the world over. They will do whatever work they need to survive. If they are doctors and they have to sell newspapers they will do it. And you watch them advance faster and they're sitting ducks.'

'Ask my boss why he employs me,' said Mhanda. 'He is a white boss. He will tell you South Africans are lazy. They get up and start drinking beer. They don't like to work. They don't do the job properly. They don't come to work and still expect to be paid. He says he has had to deal with that all his life.'

That is not the view in Alexandra, a township of about 500,000 people living in difficult conditions in the heart of Johannesburg where the violence began two weeks ago. It, like Soweto, has been one of the beneficiaries of large government spending to bring decent housing and schools to the townships.

But what the uplift has not brought is jobs. Earning a living remained difficult, and was not made easier as Zimbabweans fleeing their country's economic crisis packed in to the township.

Many were well educated and found work that Alexandrans could not. The bitterness grew until it exploded. Now about 1,000 immigrants are packed in to the compound of the township's police station for protection.

Veronica Khoza, a street trader, has little sympathy. 'They give the jobs to Zimbabweans because they will work for cheap wages. We are South Africans. We know our rights and we demand to be paid properly,' she said.

There is also contempt for their failure to take on Robert Mugabe.

'They have run away,' said Khoza 'All they do is complain about how horrible Mugabe is to them. Why don't they stay in their country and fight? We fought apartheid. Many people were killed. Many people went to prison, even children. The white soldiers were here, in Alexandra, and they shot people. We didn't just run away.'

Perhaps not, but large numbers of South Africans did leave the country to join the liberation struggle and ended up living in Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania and Mozambique. It is a source of bitterness among immigrants from those countries that the hospitality they offered is not reciprocated.

More than 5,000 immigrants have stayed at Verryn's church since it opened its doors to them four years ago. Some have slept there for just a couple of nights. Others have remained for years. About one-third are women and children who sleep in a separate part of the building although a number of women have become pregnant and given birth while living in the church.

This, and allegations of criminal activity, has led to hostile coverage in the South African press that Verryn says has contributed to antagonism toward immigrants. He is exercised by an article in the Star newspaper two years ago under the headline: 'Place of worship now a den of iniquity.'

Appeal

It carried the story of a Zimbabwean immigrant, Andrew Khumalo, who was stabbed to death in the church in a row over clothes. It quoted members of the congregation as complaining that people had sex in the church, and there was drunkenness and brawling.

'There are problems but look at the other people who have settled here who are a credit to the country. Some are working in their professions. There are builders, mechanics, accountants, teachers," said Verryn. "There's a sense of solidarity, of family, in this building. People really help each other.'

The police raided the church in February, arresting hundreds of undocumented immigrants. Verryn said the police behaved like criminals.

'They were assaulting people. They were stealing. Their whole demeanour was aggressive,' he said.

All those detained were later freed.

Many South Africans are ashamed of the violence. Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town and anti-apartheid leader, appealed for an end to the attacks. We human beings, ever since the Garden of Eden, are looking for scapegoats,' he wrote.

The bishop receives a call about a church in the wealthy white Johannesburg suburb which is less than enthusiastic about taking refugees.

He quotes Matthew's gospel at the caller - 'I was a stranger and you welcomed me in' and, after hanging up, smiles and says he might send a few homeless immigrants up to the hesitant church.”

The xenophobic violence received little attention at the national level. The government was virtually quiet, a deafening silence on such a critical matter which sent the wrong signals to the marauding gangs who were busy attacking the immigrants.

They used everything and anything they could lay their hands on: bricks, clubs, stones, knives, machetes, pangas, guns, fire. They maimed, raped, and killed. And they burnt people alive. Yet the government did not respond to the carnage and orgy of violence that was there for everybody to see in clear view on national television.

President Thabo Mbeki himself did not even address the matter when the violence first erupted, and it was not until several days later that he decided to take some action by authorising military intervention to help quell the violence; something he should have done sooner or right away when it became clear – right from the beginning – that the violence could escalate into a national crisis if it was not dealt with effectively and if there was no clear demonstration of military force against the attackers.

It took the president two weeks before he spoke about the violence, and not in very strong language even then! He also didn't say much. And it was only a short statement that was read on the radio and television when he addressed the nation.

Although he went on television and spoke on the radio at the same time addressing the problem, only briefly, he still did not go to see the victims of the violence or the areas which had been torn by the violence. Presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said the president did not visit the victims of the violence or the places where the xenophobic attacks has taken place because he was “busy.”

Many people saw his failure or unwillingness to visit the affected areas and the victims of the violence as lack of compassion for the people in plight.

Some ANC leaders visited the troubled spots but the president did not join them.

So all he could do was give a short speech on radio and television on the subject.

And it happened to be on African Liberation Day - also known as Africa Day - which was observed across the continent on Sunday, 25 May 2008, in commemoration of the struggle for African independence.

May 25^th was chosen by African countries as African Liberation Day because that was the day when the leaders of 32 independent African countries who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 23 May – 25 May 1963 signed the charter that officially established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The OAU was replaced by the African Union (AU) in 2002.

The xenophobic violence which tore through South Africa made a mockery of all that. It also raised serious questions about President Mbeki's commitment to take stern measures against those who attack foreigners.

The violence erupted in Alexandra on 11 May 2008. Why did he wait until African Liberation Day – two weeks later – to address the matter?

And after addressing the nation on Africa Day on Sunday, May 25^th, he flew to Japan the next day, thus sending very bad signals to the victims and the entire nation and even to the attackers who waged this vicious xenophobic campaign.

It seemed he didn't care, even if he did. Going to Japan to attend the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) seemed to be more important to him than addressing a national crisis at home.

Ironically, the theme of the conference was “"Towards a Vibrant Africa: A Continent of Hope and Opportunity.” Reflecting on what had happened in South Africa, the contradiction was obvious even though it was not intended as a rebuke to President Mbeki.

Even the national executive committee of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) whose members met to address the crisis criticised the cabinet for not treating the violence as a national emergency.

President Mbeki waited an awful long time before he addressed the subject and was strongly criticised by many people for his failure to respond to the crisis when it was going on during the first few days. As Florence Panoussian stated in her report in the Mail&Guardian on Africa Day, 25 May 2008, entitled “Absent Mbeki Criticised Over Violence”:

“South African President Thabo Mbeki, already under fire for perceived policy failings that caused an anti-immigrant backlash in his country, now faces questions about his handling of the crisis.

The head of state is yet to visit the worst affected areas of Johannesburg after two weeks of violence against foreigners that has left more than 50 dead and more than 25,000 displaced.

His pronouncements have been limited to a statement given to newspapers more than a week after trouble began, a promise to create an investigating committee, and a brief comment carried by state radio South African Broadcasting Corporation on Saturday in which he talked of "the humiliating disgrace" of the episode.

Despite spreading violence, which began in Johannesburg two weeks ago but has now hit seven of the country's nine provinces, he has not made a public address on the radio or television to appeal for calm.

'A strong appeal to the South African people from the president would be very welcome indeed,' says Olmo Von Meijenfeldt, an analyst from the Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

The latest incident underlines his distant style of leadership, he adds.

"He is not a man ... to put himself at the forefront," Von Meijenfeld says.

'Due to his style of leadership and his personality, he is someone who is a bit far away from the day-to-day life of these communities.'

By contrast, his rival in the African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, who defeated him to become head of the party in December, has been more vocal and is to visit victims on Sunday.

The issue of the violence is not just a personal embarrassment to Mbeki, who has long championed the pan-African cause. Unheeded warnings of a looming problem are coming back to haunt the government as a whole.

Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils has admitted that the government knew tensions were growing.

'Of course we were aware there was something brewing. It is one thing to know there is a social problem and another thing to know when that outburst will occur,' he said.

Outbreaks of anti-immigrant attacks have been reported since the late 1990s and the South African Human Rights Commission had warned in 2007: 'Xenophobia is definitely increasing.'

Again, in March of this year, the commission issued a statement reiterating 'its concern about the scourge of xenophobic violent attacks and brutal murders of foreign nationals.'

It urged the government to pass a hate crimes law.

It is a poor reflection on Mbeki that both Von Meijenfeldt and Moetlesi Mbeki, of the South African Institute of International Affairs, believe a public appeal by the president would have limited impact.

Moetlesi Mbeki is the president's own brother, but an outspoken critic nonetheless.

'The current government has lost its credibility,' he said.

'Even a strong statement by somebody who has such weak authority will not convince the people.'

The underlying reason for the brutal outbreak of violence, which has seen gangs of armed youths purging poor slum areas of their foreign inhabitants, is a failed immigration and foreign policy, he says.

'This crisis is the result of the failure of their foreign policy against Zimbabwe and they don't want to admit that,' says Moetlesi Mbeki.

He believes Mbeki's failure to tackle Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has presided over the collapse of his country's economy, is of paramount importance in the current context.

Between one and three million Zimbabweans are estimated to have fled their homeland to find work in South Africa and they now stand accused by locals of stealing jobs and committing crime.

'The solution has always been to take a strong position against Mugabe,' says Moetlesi.

The South African president was widely derided for saying there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe on a visit to capital Harare last month.

In 2007, he said that immigration from the country was 'something that we have to live with.'

The result has been an influx of people and a loss of confidence in South Africa's ability to police its borders and control migration.

South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille wrote on Friday that the ANC should stop casting around for excuses. A "third force," right-wingers and criminals have been accused of stirring up trouble.

'It [the ANC] cannot face the fact that the state's failure to stem the tide of illegal immigration and the almost total incapacity to process the wave of refugee applications was the short-term catalyst for the violence,' she said.

'The ANC elite will never face the fact that poverty stricken South Africans bear the brunt for government's policy failures,' she wrote in her weekly online letter.”

And there were ominous signs that the trouble was far from over. It is highly probable that attacks on foreigners will continue indefinitely. This was clearly demonstrated when the president of the ANC ruling party, Jacob Zuma, addressed a crowd of thousands two weeks after the violence started.

Thousands of them cheered when some people told Zuma at the rally that he should work with the leaders of Zimbabwe and Mozambique – and other countries to send the immigrants back to their home countries. According to the Mail&Guardian, 25 May 2008, in its report, “Mbeki, Zuma Condemn Attacks”:

“All people in South Africa should be tolerant of one another, African National Congress president Jacob Zuma said in Bakerton on the East Rand on Sunday....

He came to address thousands of people in Bakerton (in Gauteng Province) about concerns regarding service delivery and the recent attacks in the area.

Zuma, accompanied by provincial ANC chairperson Paul Mashatile and the Ekurhuleni mayor Duma Nkosi, was welcomed by more than 8,000 people....

People in the province's townships, especially on the East Rand, attacked foreigners, vandalised and looted their properties since May 12. They claimed that foreigners, among others, provided cheap labour and contributed to the levels of crime.

Thousands of foreigners were left destitute and have sought refuge at police stations, churches and local halls.

The large crowd applauded when some members of the community said that foreigners were not welcome in Bakerton and that they must leave the area....

Four men who spoke from the floor identified the preference given to foreigners in the nearby mines, foreigners' arrogance and boastfulness and housing....

The crowd applauded their community representatives when they told Zuma to take all foreigners with him and organise with the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and the Mozambique's president Armando Guebuza that they be sent back to their countries.”

According to another report, in the Sowetan, 26 May 2008, “ANC president Jacob Zuma appealed for calm and restraint as some community members called for the deportation of all foreigners during a meeting in Springs yesterday....'We want them gone,' insisted one person in the audience. 'They must all be repatriated to their countries. We have a problem here.'”

Some at the meeting even said the national leaders themselves – of the ruling African National Congress – should leave South Africa and follow the foreigners to their countries. According to the Sowetan, 26 May 2008:

“Zuma said some foreigners had played major roles in the attainment of freedom in South Africa. ANC members were treated with compassion when they were in exile in Mogadishu, Somalia, he said. He criticised locals for the manner in which they treated Somalis in the country.

Some members of the audience disagreed with Zuma, with some shouting that the ANC leadership should follow the foreigners to their countries.

During his verbal assault on the ANC, one unrepentant speaker also challenged Zuma to join those who were packing for Mozambique.

Another speaker warned that Zuma would be kicked out of office if he became a stumbling block to the aspirations of the community....

After the meeting some people called for attacks on foreigners be intensified....'Tonight we’ll carry on with the purging of foreigners in our midst,' a woman said to her friend.”

They were expressing a collective sentiment shared by many black South Africans in the audience at that meeting and elsewhere in many other parts of the country.

Such sentiments don't bode well for the future of black African immigrants in South Africa. And it is highly likely that another major wave of xenophobic terror will sweep across the nation, driving countless foreigners out of South Africa, including those who have been accorded legal status – permanent residence and even citizenship.

The campaign may also be prosecuted as a “sophisticated” form of low-intensity warfare, making life very difficult and uncomfortable for foreigners including legal residents to force or “encourage” them to leave “voluntarily” and even give up their South African citizenship, for those who have that.

The strong sentiments against black African immigrants expressed at a public meeting with Zuma in Bakerton on 25 May 2008 may be an indication of things to come. The war against foreigners is not over. The sentiments were also shared by other black South Africans in other parts of the country.

And that was two weeks after the violence had claimed at least 50 lives.

Among the black South Africans who continued to express those sentiments were some Pretorians in a settlement near the nation's capital, Pretoria. As reported by Xolani Mbanjwa in the Independent, one of the South African newspapers, on 26 May 2008 in a report entitled “'Things Are Better Without Foreigners'”:

“Residents of Itireleng informal settlement, north of Pretoria, believe they are better off now that the foreigners are gone.

In February, Itireleng exploded with xenophobic violence - a sign of things to come.

Hundreds of Somalis, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans were attacked and chased out of the township.

And since then, according to local residents, crime levels have decreased.

When the Pretoria News team visited the informal settlement recently, locals said they could finally sleep with their doors open again.

Politicians say a "third force" is behind the recent surge in xenophobic attacks in other informal settlements, but Itireleng residents said they were responsible for their own actions.

They wanted foreigners out. But they admitted there were criminal elements who took advantage of the situation.

Willy Racheku, who is unemployed, said they had grown tired of living with foreigners in filthy conditions. They called a community meeting in February to address various problems, including crime.

'At that meeting we told foreigners they're not welcome in Itireleng anymore. The community took a decision and you can't say that all residents of Itireleng are criminals who incited violence because they reached a decision together.'

After the meeting, some foreigners left. Others refused, because they had nowhere to go.

Local resident Michael Meso said: 'It was then that we forcefully drove them out.'

Several foreigners were severely beaten. Homes and shops belonging to foreigners were looted and torched.

About 11 locals were arrested for public violence, but released on warning a week later. They were cheered by the crowd at the Atteridgeville magistrate's court.

It is estimated that more than 700 foreigners lived in Itireleng. Not one is left.

The residents have many grievances related to the foreigners.

Locals accused residents of the neighbouring suburbs of Laudium and Erasmia of employing foreigners.

They also accused foreigners of accepting low pay and thereby "undermining" the government's efforts to implement minimum wages. Some apparently get paid R20 a day as domestic workers.

One woman said: 'South Africans are used to the minimum wages now of at least R1 200 a month for domestic workers and when foreigners accept low pay, they get the jobs and we are left with nothing.

'Those who hire them are also to blame because they know there are minimum wages that have been set and should be followed.'

Peter Morapedi, the head of the community policing sector forum, said: 'We ran them (foreigners) out in two days. We told them we don't want them back. We never want to see them here.

'We blame the government for allowing so many illegal immigrants to cross into this country. The government should now have refugee camps for these people because we don't want them here anymore. Crime has never been so low in Itireleng. Cellphone and cable theft, house robberies and break-ins, rapes, gunshots at night and especially at the weekends are no more.'

Morapedi has a logbook where crimes are recorded. In the past week, the only problem was a shebeen brawl.

Foreigners, mostly Zimbabweans, first settled in Itireleng in 2000.

Morapedi said: 'We allowed them to stay with us because of what was happening in Zimbabwe. But in 2004 there were so many foreigners we thought they were outnumbering us.'

Residents said another reason that foreigners had to leave was that the government ignored their pleas for services.

'Every time we meet council officials they tell us there is no budget for roads, clinics, schools and all sorts of things because there are so many people who live in bad conditions in Itireleng. The government doesn't know that as many as 10 foreigners would share one shack,' said Meso.

Residents also accused police for not doing enough to protect them.

Police spokesperson Captain Thomas Mufamadi said: 'All I can say is that we have dealt with the xenophobic issue in Itireleng. If people have any complaints, they should approach the police station.'

Residents also accused "corrupt" Home Affairs officials of "selling" documents.

Foreigners were accused of falsifying South African identity documents by replacing pictures in stolen ID books with their own.

Residents said the government should have established refugee camps for all foreigners instead of allowing them to live with locals in informal settlements.

Morapedi said: "Many illegal and legal immigrants stay in informal settlements.

'But we are poor and unemployed and trying to survive with what we have, through grants and informal jobs. Foreigners are competing with us for the same things.

'Killing foreigners is bad and we never had loss of life in Itireleng, but it seems to us who live in these conditions that foreigners are more important to the government than its own people.

"That's why you see these attacks happening in informal settlements.'

The Itireleng locals have now warned that they are considering chasing foreigners from Laudium and Erasmia, where they have sought refuge.

They said women who worked as domestic workers in Laudium, Erasmia and surrounding areas had been mugged on their way to and from work.

'We will also drive them out of Laudium and Erasmia because since they've been there crime has shot up in that area.

'We have found foreigners who enter here illegally at night and we call the police to come and take them away,' said Morapedi.

Residents are so determined to keep foreigners out of the area that they have established an office where foreigners, who were driven out of the area, have to report to before visiting their relatives, mostly South African wives and children, who were allowed to remain in their shacks.

A South African woman married to a Mozambican said life was difficult without her husband.

'It's difficult to get him home and it is not safe for him to be at home. But since so many people have been killed, I am grateful that nothing happened to him during the violence,' she said.

Another said: 'We sleep peacefully now. In the past we would have sleepless nights with gunshots in the middle of the night and especially at the weekends. Now the situation is normal.'”

Even when Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula announced on 26 May 2008 that the violence had been brought under control, uprooted immigrants were still not sure they would ever be safe in South Africa.

In fact, the death toll from the attacks on black African immigrants reached 62, according to what national police spokeswoman Sally de Beer said on 30 May 2008. The previous death toll was 56, but some of the injured died in hospitals. And there was no guarantee it would not continue to rise.

And it did. The final death toll was said to be 65. Then later, about mid-June, a Mozambican immigrant was stoned and burned to death by black South Africans in the Pretoria area, a clear and strong warning to black African immigrants that they still were not welcome in the country. According to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) News, Johannesburg, 14 June 2008:

“Another Mozambican has died at the hands of an angry mob, this time in Atteridgeville near Pretoria. Police say the 30-year-old man was dowsed with petrol and stoned to death in the Phomolong section of the township.

The attackers accused the victim of being part of a group that had burnt a shack belonging to a local. Police have ruled out xenophobia. Spokesperson Thomas Mufamadi says armed criminals attacked the man, robbing him of cash. However, the man's family says he lost three spaza shops during previous xenophobic attacks. A woman has also been arrested.

Ernesto Nhamwavane became the face of last month's xenophobic attacks gripping South Africa after pictures of him burning alive were splashed on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. He was attacked by a mob of 100 people in the Ramaphosa squatter camp on the East Rand. More than 60 people died in the anti-immigrant violence.

Meanwhile, the Gauteng Provincial Government has promised victims of xenophobic attacks that they are doing everything in their power to make it safe for them to return to their homes.

This morning about 200 foreign nationals marched to the offices of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa in the Johannesburg CBD to hand over a memorandum. The memorandum addressed to President Thabo Mbeki calls for an end to xenophobic violence and urgent implementation of the foreigners' re-integration programme. Gauteng Premier Spokesperson, Simon Zwane, received the memorandum.”

About three weeks before that incident in the Pretoria area which claimed the life of the Mozambican immigrant, the president of the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Mangosuthu Buthelezi, visited the victims of the xenophobic violence in Alexandra township on Saturday, 24 May 2008, and also visited Germiston and Thokoza townships, saying:

“Now that we have gained our freedom, we push aside the very people who helped liberate us from oppression.” He was quoted by the Sowetan, 26 May 2008.

Yet, some of the victims wondered, where was he when the violence was going on? As one displaced Zimbabwean asked: “Where was Buthelezi when people were being massacred?”

His party, the IFP, had been accused of being one of the forces - and in many cases of being the primary force - behind the violence, inciting mobs to attack and drive foreigners out of the country.

But even if it played such a role, which it probably did, that did not explain all the violence in different parts of country in which black South Africans of other tribes, and not just the Zulu, were also involved.

In fact, more attacks took place on Monday, 26 May 2008, the same day the government announced that the attacks had been brought under control. And foreigners still living in some parts of South Africa which were supposed to be safe for them during the xenophobic campaign did not feel safe.

Take the case of Janet Phiri, for example, an immigrant from Zambia who lived in an area of Soweto that was supposed to be safe for foreigners. She did not feel safe and there was no guarantee she would be safe if she continued to live there. And she knew that she wasn't always welcome in South Africa.

She was interviewed by Bruce Faser of the Sowetan on Monday, 26 May 2008, the same day some foreigners were attacked in Diepsloot, an area north of Johannesburg. According to the report entitled “Survivor in Soweto”:

“Sowetan meets a Zambian lady living in Soweto, who has had to overcome the death of her husband, separation from her children, difficulty with officialdom and battled to find work to feed herself. Now she fears for her life.

Sitting in Moroko Park, Soweto, feels like a million miles away from the mayhem that is Alexandra township.

To one side young men take part in an impromptu game of football, lovers stroll lazily through the well-manicured gardens, people gather to braai a piece of meat for lunch.

While on the other side of town the recent xenophobic attacks have brought shame on our country, here in Moroka the scene is peaceful … but one that could easily change.

Xenophobic attacks are nothing new. Sadly they have become a regular occurance in many African countries as well as those in Eastern Europe but the bloody violence of this past week is a sobering realisation that things are far from well at home.

'The attacks on foreigners that we have recently seen could easily spread. Just this morning there were reports of attacks in Diepsloot,' a visibly worried Janet Phiri (not her real name) explains....

Setting up an interview with Phiri, a Zambian, presented its problems.

She flatly refused to be photographed or filmed and insisted that her name be changed so there is no way she can be identified. Nonetheless hers is a story worth relating.

Like thousands of her fellow countrymen, Phiri, 39, left Zambia for what she believed would be a better life in South Africa.

After matriculating from Kabulonga High School in Lusaka, Zambia, she went on to study business management at a local college.

Her family have always been involved in the meat industry and it wasn’t long before she opened a butchery along with a hair salon.

Although her businesses did well and her husband had a good job in the IT profession, they decided on emigrating to South Africa where they felt the opportunities were greater.

'My husband came down in 2000 and I followed shortly afterwards. Our three children remained behind with my parents until we were properly settled. My husband had a work permit but I had to wait three years before I qualified for one. In the meantime I decided to do a business administration course through Damelin in Midrand,' she explains.

Her husband quickly found the work and environment of Johannesburg stimulating and rapidly rose through the ranks of his company to eventually become group managing director with a seven percent stake in the company.

The children soon joined them and life seemed perfect ... until mid-2006.

'My husband was complaining now and then of chest pains and was put on medication. His health deteriorated rapidly and tragically he died in hospital.'

With three children to look after and no work permit, Janet had no choice but to send her kids back home to Lusaka to live with her parents.

It has not been easy for her since the death of her husband but she refuses to give up.

'Fortunately now I have a work permit. A lot of foreigners are educated and I am proud to say that, but when I go for a job people often say ‘Why give a foreigner a job?’ Despite all that I am a proud Zambian.'

The recent wave of xenophobic attacks are obviously a worry for any immigrant to South Africa and Janet is obviously concerned.

Her features are distinctly Zambian and she knows it.

'The problems the people in Alexandra are facing, tomorrow I can face them. People in Alex say foreigners are getting RDP houses – taking their wives and husbands – come on, I just can’t walk into someone else’s house.'

As a foreigner Janet tries her best to blend in with the local community.

'When you go to Rome you do as the Roman’s do, so when I arrived in South Africa I decided to try and fit in. Let me give you a small example.

'In Zambia we eat pap with spoons and here with your hands … so I said to myself ‘let me eat with my hands.’ There is a very nice saying: ‘Don’t act big in a small world’. Generally foreigners get along with local people which makes these latest incidents very sad. Seeing what is happening is heartbreaking as they are foreigners just like me. It is terrible to see how the people are suffering.'

During the days of apartheid many South Africans went into exile in countries such as Zambia. There is a feeling that when South Africans needed a home neighbouring countries opened their doors. Today, South Africa is not only closing that door but slamming it shut in the face of immigrants.

'When the president of South Africa was in exile in our country we treated him as a brother. When he was thirsty we gave him water … now is the time for him to give us a cup of water. Where is he now?

'Those same men that came to Zambia are today driving Prado’s or even in government, but their kids are suffering. We gave them food, education … they fathered kids with out sisters. We don’t tell those kids to go back to South Africa. These kids don’t even know who their fathers are – they just disappeared.'

Today Janet is working for an NGO that specialises in educating children on life skills.

Emphasis is placed on the importance of education and trying to steer them away from the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

For any immigrant life can be tough without a family support system around you and for Janet it is no different.

'I miss my friends, family and especially my children. I phone them at least once a week but it never seems enough.Also without my husband it is tough. We used to love watching soccer together. He used to support Chiefs, me Pirates.... We used to sit in front of the TV, he with his Amstel, me with my Hunters, and cheer for our sides. Today I prefer not to watch football because it brings back too many painful memories.'

Instead she has immersed herself in her work and any spare time is spent reading or going to church.

One plan she has for the future is organising a forum for foreigners that will help guide and integrate them into South African society. 'Maybe then we can avoid the tragedy that is unfolding before us today.'

Getting worried that people might be suspicious as to why she was talking to a white person in Soweto, she left me with these words. 'A rich man without a dream is poorer than a poor guy with a dream.'”

The xenophobic violence against the immigrants in May 2008 was organised terror. And it required an appropriate response especially after it was clear, as was indeed the case, that the police alone would not be able to cope with it.

But the police themselves were slow to respond when the violence erupted. And they used heavy-handed tactics in their dealings with many foreigners. Many policemen had also been known to demand bribes from foreigners, especially African immigrants, through the years. According to a report on the xenophobic attacks published in the Mail&Guardian, Johannesburg, 22 May 2008, “We Should Not Look for Scapegoats”:

“A Somali community in Johannesburg on Thursday accused police of firing live ammunition at its members as more xenophobic attacks were reported in Gauteng and former Cabinet minister Kader Asmal questioned claims of 'third force' involvement in the attacks.

At least 42 people have been killed and 17,000 displaced in the fierce violence that started in Alexandra on May 11.

Tensions are running high among communities of foreign nationals who have come under attack in the past week. Scores of Somalis have fled Gauteng townships to Mayfair in central Johannesburg, where there is a large Somali community....

Angry onlookers wanted to know why police were using live ammunition in an area with so many children. Abbas Mohammed, aged nine, said: 'They almost shot us with a gun.'

[Somali] community leader Mohammed Abdul Hakir said, 'People are on edge'....'They said [to the police], 'When we are being looted, you are not there. So why are you shooting now?'....

Numerous Somali people on the scene complained to the Mail&Guardian (reporters) about being hassled by corrupt police officials asking them for bribes.

They claimed it is an everyday occurrence, with a South African resident agreeing, alleging police come 'every weekend to take money from the foreigners.'

An average bribe is reportedly between R2,000 and R5,000.

Firdose Ali (not her real name) said: 'They always come to ask for papers. If you don't have, you must give them money. They search our rooms and take anything they want, like phones and TVs. If you can afford to give them money, you can get your stuff back. The bad ones are from John Vorster [police station].'

Another witness on the scene, Abdul Bille Hassan -- a survivor of past xenophobic violence in Pretoria -- recalled: 'We had a shop and in the middle of the night [at the time] they came and poured petrol around the house.'

He spent three months in hospital and has become increasingly distressed this week by the wave of attacks.

Meanwhile, xenophobic violence broke out again in Ramaphosa informal settlement on the East Rand on Thursday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported.

The renewed attacks, in which a number of shacks were set alight, happened as Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the Kenyan high commissioner to South Africa, Thomas Amolo, visited foreigners affected by the recent violence in the area.”

The government should have declared a state of emergency and sent in troops from the army to contain the situation before it deteriorated. And the perpetrators of the violence should have been dealt with ruthlessly, right away, within the bounds of the law.

It was not until 10 days later that President Thabo Mbeki authorised military intervention to assist the police in an attempt to stop the violence. The xenophoic attacks started on Sunday, 11 May 2008. Mbeki authorised assistance by the South African national Defence Force (SANDF) on Wednesday, 21 May 2008.

The attackers had whole 10 days to wreak havoc on the black African immigrants with impunity, while the national government virtually looked the other way and did nothing to stop the violence all those days.

Regional police forces were left by themselves to deal with the crisis, and only half-heartedly even on their part, and without any help from the national government as if it was a minor regional problem, until it was almost too late! With many people dead, and almost 30,000 uprooted and displaced, left with nothing, after all their property was looted and destroyed by their attackers.

The violence left bitter memories among the victims. And it soured relations between the South Africans and the people from other African countries.

Even other Africans in different parts of the continent and elsewhere were bitter and saddened by what happened to their compatriots in South Africa and were quick to remind black South Africans that it was they, fellow Africans, who helped to free them from apartheid; only to be kicked in the mouth, in the groin and in the stomach as an expression of gratitude for all what they had done for them during their darkest hour, and days, when they were suffering under racial oppression by whites and needed help to win their freedom.

People saw friends and relatives killed right in front of them. And the survivors left South Africa with those bitter memories. As the Mail&Guardian, Thursday, 22 May 2008, stated in its report entitled, “'I Saw My Friend Being Killed in Front of Me'”:

“Regina Chinyandi (21), of Zimbabwe, arrived at the Alexandra police station on Monday with her one-day-old baby, Prince, wrapped in a napkin. Upon her return home from the hospital after giving birth, she had found her shack in ruins and all her friends from the township missing.

'Confused, she started walking, unable to afford taxi money to the nearest police station,' says Flora Shabangu, clinic manager at the charity organisation Woman and Men against Child Abuse's Kidz clinic in Boksburg. She is currently assisting at the police station.

'When she arrived here, she was exhausted,' Shabangu says.

Chinyandi is lying on the floor, under a single blanket, still too exhausted to talk. She is just one of the about 27,000 foreigners left homeless in Gauteng since fierce xenophobic attacks started 11 days ago in Alexandra

According to police, by late on Wednesday, 42 people had been killed and 400 arrested for various offences related to the violence.

There are now 21 volunteers working at the Alexandra police station, which houses hundreds of foreigners who come and go. 'My legs are paining [hurting],' says Elizabeth Mokoena, a community coordinator volunteering at the station. 'I sleep at the police station to try to help these people every night.'

Refugees at the police station in Diepkloof, which has also seen violent attacks in the past week, say they don't know the scope of the attacks, since they have no newspapers to read or access to any other media.

'We are just sitting here. Stranded. Not knowing where to go or what is happening next,' says Michael Mwale (47), a Zimbabwean who has been at the station for more than a week.

'We have not bathed for a week,' he says. 'We have no buckets or soap and we need shoes and jackets. Blankets are a problem. I was cold last night. It is winter. There arrived 10 more people today [Wednesday] and they don't have blankets yet -- and some of them have children.'

Mwala was unable to find employment in Zimbabwe and came to South Africa searching for a job to provide for his children. 'I am still unemployed because I could not find a job here either. Now I am stranded here and I still can't send money to my family.'

Another stranded foreigner, Charles Munganya (20), from Malawi, used to be a shop employee in Marabastad in Pretoria. He has lost everything in the attacks.

'I wanted to save money to do something good in my country. I wanted to be a crop and maize farmer and start my own business at home. They [the attackers] took everything I had. That means I worked so hard for nothing.'

Like many other foreigners, Munganya will do anything to return to his home country. 'It is better to be killed at home than to be killed in another country,' he says. 'I saw my friend being killed in front of me. He was lying in his bed with dead eyes. He was beaten to death.'

Manganya says that local officials have told foreigners that buses will return them to their home countries, but the refugees do not know when -- or if -- this will happen. 'Even if I go home, I will never put my foot in this country again. This country is only for South Africans,' he says.

At the Diepkloof police station, there are nine volunteers serving the growing number of foreigners arriving at the station. According to a police officer, who asked not to be identified, there have been rumours of South Africans planning to drive the foreign refugees out of the police station, 'taking away the only shelter that they have.'

Another officer at the station says police have been working around the clock to contain violence in the area.

'I have been working from early this morning and I will only be returning home at 7pm tonight. Then I have to be back at work at 11pm. I am really tired,' she says, rushing off to Olievenhoutbosch, a nearby informal settlement where tension was reported late on Wednesday afternoon.

At the Bramley police station, close to Alexandra, 14 women and 10 children are sleeping in a garage. Outside, 120 men are housed in tents. There are eight portable toilets around the station for the 144 people housed there.

'We only escaped with the clothes on our backs,' says Nonhlanhla Luphahla (24), from Zimbabwe. She appreciates the three basic meals the refugees receive every day, prepared from donations.

Unlike the foreigners housed at the Diepsloot police station, those at Bramley are lucky enough to be able to bathe, using buckets.

'But it is hard to bathe in cold water in winter,' says Luphahla. She shakes her head. 'I just don't know.'”

The catastrophe could have been averted with timely intervention and with the necessary amount of force especially from the army.

The deputy president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Kgalema Motlanthe, also acknowledged that the police, hence the government, did not respond fast enough and when they should have. As the Mail&Guardian stated in its report on Thursday, 22 May 2008, “ANC on Xenophobic Attacks: Cops Acted Too Slowly”:

“African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe on Thursday said the police responded too slowly to the first xenophobic attacks in Alexandra.

This came as it was reported that anti-foreigner violence had spread to North West.

More than 40 people have been killed since the outbreak of xenophobic attacks on foreigners in Alexandra on May 11....

'The area where this problem started should have been cordoned off immediately, but the delay encouraged people in similar environments to wage similar attacks,' he said....

Meanwhile, South African troops prepared on Thursday to enter townships to help police end the wave of xenophobic attacks.

President Thabo Mbeki's call for the army's intervention was an acknowledgment that the attacks on foreigners had become a national crisis that threatened to destabilise Africa's largest economy.

More than 15,000 migrant workers and their families have fled to refugee camps after 11 days of attacks by mobs armed with clubs, knives and jugs of petrol. Several people have been burned to death and scores of shacks looted and torched.

Soldiers are expected to participate in joint operations with police, who have failed to prevent the anti-foreigner attacks from spreading from Johannesburg area shantytowns to other parts of the nation, including KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and North West....

The attacks on African migrants, accused by many poor South Africans of taking scarce jobs and fuelling crime, has increased political instability at a time of power shortages, rising inflation and disaffection over Mbeki's pro-business policies.

The South African currency weakened sharply earlier this week on the back of the violence.

Foreigners depart

....'We must leave, it is not safe here,' a Zimbabwean woman said on Wednesday as she left the Primrose informal settlement outside Johannesburg where gangs of youths burnt and looted migrants' shacks.

Others, especially migrants from neighbouring Mozambique, are also making plans to leave South Africa, which has a population of about 50-million and is home to an estimated five million immigrants.

The biggest immigrant group -- an estimated three million -- are from neighbouring Zimbabwe. They have fled economic collapse at home and the violent political stand-off there since disputed March 29 elections.

South Africa's reputation as a haven for immigrants and asylum seekers is in tatters, and there are growing fears that the crisis could dent the country's lucrative tourism industry and cripple its hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Government officials have raised the possibility that the attacks were not spontaneous but organised, possibly for political reasons. Four community leaders are among the more than 400 people arrested in connection with the violence.”

When the attacks spread to Cape Town on 22 May 2008, the violence sent even more shock waves through the black immigrant community, serving as a warning to the immigrants that the entire country could be engulfed in this wave of terror and xenophobic violence.

And there were indications that it was far from over, as more attacks - on the same day, May 22^nd - took place in the North West Province and in Durban as well as other parts of KwaZulu/Natal Province where more black African immigrants were attacked and their property destroyed. The victims included Malawians, Nigerians, Mozambicans and many others. At least two Malawians were shot in Durban. One died.

The Sowetan, in its edition of 23 May 2008, had this to say on the violence in Durban and other parts of KwaZulu-Natal Province, “More Assaults in Durban”:

“Another five foreigners were injured after being assaulted on Friday in Durban’s Quarry Heights area, police said....

Earlier, KwaZulu-Natal Safety and Security MEC Bheki Cele said 10 people had been arrested for attacks on foreigners in the province. He was speaking to Sapa as details of several overnight attacks on foreigners in Durban were reported to police....He said he had spoken to some foreigners and was told 'astounding things.'

'I was told that those attacking foreigners had a list of all the foreigners and details of where they stayed. This is because some foreigners were being harassed since 1992 and their attackers live nearby, he said.

In other incidents, two homes allegedly belonging to foreigners were burnt down in Durban’s Kenville area on Thursday and Friday....

There was a separate incident at the Kenville informal settlement on Thursday night were a shack was burnt down.

“Two foreigners were injured in that incident as well.” Meanwhile, a 23-year old Malawian man was shot as hundreds of foreigners gathered at Durban’s Cato Manor police station on Thursday night.

Netcare 911 spokesman Chris Botha said the man had been shot twice in the abdomen. He was in a serious but stable condition at a local hospital.

The man was the second Malawian to be shot in Durban in as many days.

A Malawian was taken to hospital on Wednesday night after he was shot twice in the chest in the same area.

At the Cato Manor police station about three hundred foreigners - mostly Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Malawians - had gathered out of fear of possible attacks.

In Chatsworth, dozens of foreigners sought shelter at a local community hall also for fear of becoming a victims of xenophobia.

Earlier in the week. scores of foreigners living in the Umbilo area packed their bags and were seen leaving the area.”

And according to BBC Africa, Friday, 23 May 2008, in its report, “ANC Call to Retake The Streets”:

“The secretary general of South Africa's governing ANC has called on party members to form local committees to combat violence against foreigners.

Gwede Mantashe says that they should work to 'take the streets back from criminals,' whilst giving support to the police and help to the victims.

The unrest has now spread to Cape Town, with people assaulted and shops looted....

On Thursday, troops were deployed to quell attacks - the first time soldiers have been used to stamp out unrest in South Africa since the 1994 end of apartheid....

Mr Mantashe reminded South Africans of their link to the rest of the continent ahead of Africa Day celebrations on Sunday (25 May 2008)....

'Many of us... will think of the kindness we received in the poorest communities of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria and many other African states.'

Anti-apartheid fighters in the ANC were given shelter in other African countries, some of which suffered collective punishment as a result, he recalled.

Meanwhile ANC Youth League President Julius Malema condemned the fact that youngsters appeared to be some of the ringleaders of the attacks, often using the name of the party and singing revolutionary songs whilst carrying out attacks....

Mr Malema said the government had not done enough to stop what it called "anarchy" and said swift and decisive action was needed from the country's law enforcement agencies.

The leader of South Africa's official opposition, Helen Zille, says the events of the past two weeks have shocked and shamed the nation.

Ms Zille, head of the Democratic Alliance, says in her weekly newsletter that President Thabo Mbeki has been conspicuous by his absence, not even visiting the affected areas to see for himself what is driving the violence.

She said the president should be actively campaigning in the country's trouble spots and preaching a message of tolerance.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Malawi says they have begun evacuating hundreds of Malawians from South Africa.

Officials said a task force had been set up to return up to 850 Malawians, who had been affected by the violence in South Africa.

The attacks in Cape Town, the hub of South Africa's tourism industry, broke out during a meeting called to prevent anti-foreigner violence in the Dunoon township, 25km from the city centre.

John, a Malawian at the Dunoon meeting, said it disintegrated and foreigners started fleeing as groups began to loot Somali-owned shops.

'We feared for our safety. They're just killing everyone - they start beating you when they find out you're a foreigner,' he told the BBC, adding that he was returning home as soon as possible.

Thursday night's unrest prompted some 500 people, including Somalis, Mozambicans and Nigerians, as well as Zimbabweans to flee their homes, some seeking refuge in police stations.

The BBC's Mohammed Allie in Cape Town says Somali shops were looted overnight and one Somali killed and six others injured.

He says there have been shack-to-shack searches for foreigners and some local residents have begun flying the South African flag outside their homes.

There have also been new attacks in Strand, east of Cape Town, Durban and North-West province, where three people, reportedly from Pakistan, were stabbed and dozens of Mozambican and Somali nationals displaced.

There are fears that the unrest could have longer-term consequences for the country.

Moeketski Mosola, head of South Africa Tourism, told the BBC the government was alarmed by the situation, especially as the country was preparing to host the football World Cup in 2010.

'We are extremely concerned about the situation on the ground - you must remember that 67% of the tourists coming into South Africa are mainly African,' he told the BBC's World Tonight programme....

Cape Town first witnessed xenophobic attacks two years ago (in 2006) when the Somali community - especially those who owned shops - were targeted and some murdered.”

The attacks in Cape Town in May 2008, which came after the xenophobic violence in Johannesburg a few days earlier, were bad enough and bad as the rest in terms of hostility towards black African immigrants. But they also showed the government's failure and unwillingness – at the national level - to address the problem.

After the attacks in Johannesburg, the government should have anticipated similar outbreaks in the nation's second largest city (Cape Town) and should have put the army on alert, ready to move in, even if the government did not – for whatever reason – believe that the attacks on black African immigrants in Cape Town and other parts of the Western Cape Province would not be of the same intensity and magnitude as the vicious attacks which had taken place a few days earlier in Alexandra and other areas of Johannesburg.

President Mbeki did not even address the nation to condemn the attacks when the violence first erupted; nor did he tour the areas which had been hit by this wave of xenophobia to see the damage for himself and send a powerful signal to the attackers that this kind of thing would not be tolerated in the new South Africa.

He did not even go to see the victims in the places where they had sought refuge to console them and reassure them that the government would take stern measures to stop the violence and punish the culprits and protect foreigners in South Africa.

He should have gone on national television to give a strong speech condemning the violence, making it clear that this is not the kind of new South Africa the people wanted to build after the end of apartheid.

He should also have told his national audience that this was a national crisis which would be dealt with accordingly, using every means available including military force.

He did not do that. And that may have been interpreted by the mobs attacking the immigrants as a signal to carry on the violence without fear of being severely punished by the authorities.

The xenophobic violence by black South Africans against fellow blacks from other parts of Africa was now the new apartheid.

No-one was spared. As long as you were a black foreigner, and within grasp, you were fair game. While the vast majority of those who were attacked were poor immigrants living in shanty towns and other parts of the black townships with poor black South Africans, middle-class black immigrants were not spared and were also among the victims.

One of the victims wa a Congolese engineer whose fate clearly demonstrated that high economic and social status of black African immigrants did not necessarily guarantee them security even if they lived in good areas. Even some of their neighbours in those areas turned against them. As Imke van Hoom stated in a report in the Johannesburg Mail&Guardian, Friday, 23 May 2008, entitled “A Family's Life: Only Shattered Glass and Paper Remain”:

“The rooms are empty; the furniture is gone. The windows are broken and there is glass on the ground. The floor is littered with papers, family photographs and books.

There is a dejected look in the eyes of Willy Tshitende as he looks around the living room of his brutally plundered home in Jeppestown, Johannesburg. 'My heart is bleeding. I can't understand ... I can't understand,' says the 42-year-old.

Like thousands of other foreigners, Tshitende and his family -- who are originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo -- had to flee their home this week because of fierce xenophobic violence in Gauteng. They are now staying in the garden of the Jeppe police station in central Johannesburg, where they sleep and eat outside.

Standing in the glass of the broken windows in front of his house -- a free-standing, three-storey building painted light pink with green window frames -- Tshitende relives the night almost a week ago when an angry mob arrived at his door. 'They say, 'If you don't open, when we come inside, we rape your children and we show you how to do it,'' he says.

The mob wanted to set the house on fire. 'That's when the panic started. If they put fire with these [gas] bottles we got here, then we are dead. Kids wanted to jump from the balcony.'

He points to the area in front of his house that is now glittering with shattered glass. 'But how can you jump while this angry mob is still down here?'

We enter the house through a broken door. Says Tshitende: 'This was the living room.' He pauses and stares at the mess of scattered personal belongings. 'Here we were sitting, the kids were playing …'

He finds a photo album on the ground, picks it up and opens it to look at the family pictures inside. Pointing at one of the photographs, he says: 'This must be friends of my father. He used to be a director of Alliance Française in Jo'burg. He had a lot of friends.' He adds: 'They just threw it on the ground.'

Tshitende and his family came to South Africa in 1997. He started working as a mechanical engineer and, five years ago, he bought the three-storey building not far from the Johannesburg CBD. The family liked the neighbourhood and got along well with the street's other residents.

But, says Tshitende, everything is different now. 'When we had to flee the house, we gave some of our furniture to our neighbours. They offered to take care of it. But when we came back to get it, nothing was there.'

He adds: 'Those neighbours with whom I used to talk, with whom I used to laugh, whit whom I used to share jokes ... now they didn't greet me, they didn't talk to me. They were looking at me as if [I were] a stranger [they saw] for the first time.'

Tshitende picks up an encyclopedia and other books that were left behind by the mob. 'These are very expensive books. Math books, engineering books. They leave it on the floor just like that ... For them it means nothing, but for me it means a lot.'

He continues: 'If you see these books, then it gives you a picture of people who went to school. These people [the xenophobic mobs], they don't even realise that foreigners do contribute.'

Tshitende doesn't understand why people think he is stealing their jobs. 'I didn't steal a job from anyone. My job is advertised in the newspaper almost every day. I go for the job, they phone me for an interview, I qualify and start working. Who can say that I take that job away from him?'

With the photo album and a stack of books on his arms, Tshitende and his family leave the house.

Children who are playing in the street come up to him, asking if their friends -- his family's children -- will be back. But Tshitende thinks he will never return. 'I don't know what is going to happen, but I am sure we just want to forget about this place. In one day, in one night, everything is gone.'

He adds: 'If they had the power to build like the power they have to destroy, this country should [get] very, very far.'”

South Africans who waged this vicious xenophobic campaign against the black immigrants from other parts of Africa did not care whether or not the immigrants made a great contribution to South Africa's economic growth. They were not impressed.

Also most of the immigrants including the poorest are not supported by the government and survive on their own, doing the best they can to make it life.

And many of them have gradually climbed up the economic ladder by sheer hard work. Even a significant number of poor immigrants have managed to build their own houses. They did not get government help to build those houses. And they don't expect to get any government help. They are foreigners and they are not entitled to it.

A significant number of them have also sought employment in South Africa and have been able to get those jobs because South African employers want to hire them and opportunities for employment are advertised in South African newspapers.

Sheer hard work and skills including high educational qualifications are some of the main reasons black African immigrants have been able to succeed in life in South Africa, inflaming passions among black South Africans who claim the immigrants are stealing jobs from them – and even their wives and girlfriends! As Michael Gomo, a Zimbabwean in South Africa, stated in his article published in the Mail&Guardian, 23 May 2008:

“There is nothing here about taking anyone's job. I visited Zimbabweans in Alexandra recently. They came here as refugees from the economic situation in their country. They worked hard for a few years and saved some rands. They opened corner shops where the neighbourhood bought household goods. These shops were not there before, and they identified an opportunity to serve the community.

It is horrifying that anyone in his right mind should think that a foreigner who has opened a shop is taking away someone's job when, in fact, he or she is employing local people.

We have had our own experiences with foreigners in Zimbabwe, but we never treated them the way they are being treated here. We hosted colleagues from South Africa during the apartheid era. They were never harassed to such a dehumanising extent, nor asked for papers. We even hosted some of the African National Congress leadership, and I am pretty sure other neighbouring countries such as Mozambique (Tanzania and Zambia) did the same until South Africa got its independence.

Please note: I am not saying it is payback time. I am simply asking: Why can't you be an understanding society as we were when you needed us? Let me not ask why white foreigners are safer in South Africa than their black counterparts.

I still remember vividly when the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) invaded the western parts of Mozambique and eastern regions of Zimbabwe in the late 1980s. Millions of Mozambicans flocked into Zimbabwe. Men and women, young and old, professionals and the rest, all walked very long distances into the country.

The MNR even invaded parts of Zimbabwe, killing thousands of people in the process. Yes, we lost our relatives and friends in the process. But I still remember that more than 1,000 people came to our village for safety. The village elders didn't chase them away.

They were given a place to stay. They actually slept in the open, in the field, in the few houses -- particularly the women with children.

I was one of those displaced from my bedroom to accommodate women who had young children. I slept outside just like everyone else. I never complained that a foreigner took my bedroom. I didn't even complain that it was winter and it was very cold outside.

We didn't complain that they were finishing our food because there was plenty in the field. We understood that it was a difficult situation for them and they needed someone to assist. Our elders understood there were laws of humanity to be followed. In South Africa, it seems that sometimes laws are nothing but political rhetoric.

Some foreigners decided to proceed, but others remained. Those who remained were absorbed into our families. Some of the Mozambicans looked for jobs while others became domestic workers or cattle herders. Those with families were given small pieces of land to grow their own crops.

Their children joined us at school. Despite their poor English -- they spoke Portuguese -- they were very good in mathematics. Together, as young children, we forged relationships; they taught us maths and we taught them English.

Today, as I write this piece 22 years down the line, we have people in Mozambique whom we now call our relatives. They were never threatened, killed or asked for their identity documents. They were treated like human beings. Remember, this was just six years after we had attained our independence, while in South Africa 14 years have already passed.

If you ask my elders, they will tell you that there was a time when people from Malawi flocked into Zimbabwe. Even today they constitute a sizeable percentage of the population. They have an equal share of everything. They came and looked for jobs, and settled in Zimbabwe. Today they are Zimbabweans.

There was a time when there were more Malawians owning houses in Harare than locals, because our people believed they didn't need a house in town as they already had a home in the rural areas. By then the Malawians were buying houses; today, if you go to some of the townships, especially in Harare, there are more people of Malawian origin than locals.

Zimbabweans never complained. Instead they also started buying or building houses in Harare. We learnt our lessons, sometimes the hard way, and we took it as competition. Foreigners, because they had houses in urban areas, also had access to basic services such as good schools, clinics and so forth. They were part of us and we were together. These are the people who make Zimbabwe today.

There was a time when the government ventured into housing programmes. A noble idea it was, but the Zimbabweans that I know would rather join a stand-allocation waiting list than get a government house.

They would prefer to build the house of their choice, to do it they own way -- unlike some people who still think a leader isn't a good leader because he didn't build a house for them; unlike some people in Mpumalanga who believe it is not a good idea to get a stand but rather a complete house from the government. They would rather let a Zimbabwean buy that stand and kill them later.

That's not the spirit of togetherness. The more you wait, the more the frustration. By the time you wake up, that foreigner will be a better person than you are. This world is not going to wait for waiters. Wake up and smell the coffee, South Africans!”

The attackers who unleashed this xenophobic violence in many parts of the country wanted only one thing: kick the black African immigrants out of South Africa by attacking, maiming and killing them, and by instilling fear in them and sending a warning to others to never come to South Africa.

They lost their conscience....

African Immigrants in South Africa

Author: Godfrey Mwakikagile

Paperback: 364 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (1 December 2008)

ISBN-10: 0981425828

ISBN-13: 9780981425825