Here are a few articles I gathered on the current problem in SA…
Tensions erupt in city of promise
Gauteng means “place of gold”. The lure of wealth has drawn migrant workers to what is now South Africa’s richest province, since gold was first discovered more than 120 years ago.
BBC: Wed May 21, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7413009.stm
From a small mining camp in the 1880s, Johannesburg, Gauteng’s main metropolis has become one of Africa’s great cities.
In recent years, more and more foreigners have poured in.
No-one knows exactly how many live in the crowded inner-city areas and in the squalid informal settlements scattered across Gauteng Province.
The wave of violent attacks on African migrants should have come as little surprise.
There have been simmering tensions between South Africans and foreign nationals for some time, most notably in Cape Town where members of the local Somali community have been victimised over the past couple of years.
There has also been a continuing influx of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans, fleeing the political and economic crisis in their home country.
It is often reported there are up to three million Zimbabwean exiles in South Africa, although the figure is impossible to confirm.
Valuable contribution
The Zimbabweans are frequently blamed by local people for much of South Africa’s crime.
However, the xenophobic anger and violence seen over the past fortnight can be more easily explained by economic factors.
“What’s really triggered it, is business competition. South Africans think that foreigners are controlling the taxi industry and the spaza shops (small stores) in the townships”, says Loren Landau, Director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University in Johannesburg.
Politicians have been quick to point out that many of the African migrants in South Africa have helped to build the wealth of the country.
Many of them have applied their skills and knowledge in ways that have contributed to Gauteng’s economic growth and development and continue to do so”, said the Gauteng Provincial Government in a statement released this week.
The Zimbabwean migrants are a prime example.
The country’s advanced education system in the early years of independence has created a generation of highly skilled professionals, notably doctors, nurses and teachers.
One problem for the South African government is that it has always been loath to criticise President Robert Mugabe’s failed regime.
The South African leader, Thabo Mbeki, refuses to describe Zimbabwe as “a crisis”.
As a result, Zimbabwean exiles are, for the most part, treated as economic migrants, rather than given refugee status.
This leaves them fully exposed to the frustration of local South Africans who regard the foreigners as a direct threat.
Lack of solidarity
Members of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) remember their own days in exile during the apartheid era when they found refuge all over the world, but especially in countries such as Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The ANC leaders therefore urge tolerance and respect for foreigners in South Africa today.
But for the younger generation of unemployed, impoverished South Africans, the history of the ANC’s exile years means little.
The African migrants in South Africa have therefore become the scapegoats for those on the lowest rungs of the ladder in South African society.
“There is a battle for resources”, says Tony Leon, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Democratic Alliance.
Nelson Mandela’s former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, visited one of the areas affected by attacks on foreigners this week, and apologised on behalf of the ANC.
“It is an explosion caused by lack of delivery. People say the conditions under which they live are conducive to this kind of violence, it’s not xenophobic”, she said.
The recent violence is the latest challenge for Thabo Mbeki who is fast becoming a lame duck president.
His rival, Jacob Zuma, who secured the leadership of the ANC last December, is looking like the president-in-waiting.
Mr Mbeki is once again under fire from opposition parties and political commentators over a perceived lack of strong leadership.
He has issued two written statements on the xenophobic attacks, but has left senior ministers to tackle the crisis at grassroots level.
The South African government has promised that all foreigners will be fully protected and none will be deported for the time being, regardless of their immigration status.
But many government critics believe the failure to deal decisively with the issue of Zimbabwe has exacerbated the situation.
The Zimbabweans in South Africa are just one component of the foreign migrant population.
However, with reports of increasing political violence in Zimbabwe in advance of a possible run-off in the presidential election, South Africa needs to be braced for a further flood of people across its porous borders.
SA violence spreads to Cape Town
Violence against foreigners in South Africa spread to Cape Town overnight with people assaulted and shops looted.
bbc: Friday, 23 May 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7416256.stm
The attacks broke out during a meeting called to prevent anti-foreigner violence in the Dunoon township.
The BBC’s Mohammed Allie in Cape Town says Somali shops were looted 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.
Meanwhile, the governing African National Congress (ANC) party has urged its supporters to help police take back control by forming street committees.
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, 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.
Shops looted
Police said it took them eight hours to contain the unrest in Dunoon, 25km from the city centre, and several people were arrested.
“Some people were assaulted, but mostly shops were looted,” police spokesman Billy Jones told AFP news agency.
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.
Our correspondent says the police have beefed up their presence in other Cape Town trouble spots as looting spread on Friday.
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 but most of the violence has been in the Gauteng region around Johannesburg, which is now reported to be relatively quiet.
Mines affected
Meanwhile, the government and union leaders are to meet to address the crisis in South Africa’s crucial mining industry.
Medium-sized firm DRDGold said two of its workers – one of whom was South African – had died in violence near Johannesburg on Tuesday.
It said more than half of the miners on Thursday’s day shift had failed to report for work. Almost a third of the mine’s semi-skilled workers are foreign.
National Union of Mineworkers President Senzeni Zokwana appealed for calm.
“This situation has to stop; it cannot continue happening; it doesn’t help the local people to chase others away. It is just wrong,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.
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.
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 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.”
SA denies planning refugee camps
South Africa’s government has denied it is setting up massive migrant or refugee camps for the tens of thousands of foreigners who fled recent attacks.
bbc:Wednesday, 28 May 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7424045.stm
Aid agencies had said the government would reveal plans to set up seven camps for up to 70,000 people.
But a home affairs spokeswoman said temporary shelters accommodating 2,000 each would be set up instead. A formal announcement will be made on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the UN said it is helping South Africa plan relief efforts.
It is conducting a survey of the conditions in the police stations and municipal halls in which the displaced people are currently living, UN spokesman George Nsiah told the BBC .
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) has warned that those sheltering in makeshift camps or outdoors have been left without protection – either physical or legal.
“It’s very cold at night, it’s almost like one or two degrees. It’s been raining in the last few days,” said MSF South Africa programme director Muriel Cornelis.
“And then legal protection – most of them do not have any status, no legal status, no temporary status.”
A spokesman for the UNHCR said very few of the displaced foreigners fit the formal definition of “refugee”.
Nevertheless, the government is coming under considerable pressure to organise better accommodation than the makeshift camps currently housing most of the displaced people.
Correspondents say it has made it clear that any option which isolates rather than integrates foreigners into the community would be contrary to its policy.
Overcrowding
The government said in a statement that reports, made on the BBC, that it intended to set up “refugee camps” for tens of thousands of displaced foreigners were “baseless and therefore not true”.
Home affairs department spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said temporary shelters would ensure displaced migrants had access to health services, food and sanitation, the South African Press Association reports.
MSF said it was finding cases of diarrhoea and chest infections in overcrowded existing shelters near Johannesburg.
The International Red Cross’s Francoise Le Goff told the BBC it was vital people found alternative places to stay.
“We have problems with sanitation; it’s cold; people are getting sick, so their security is barely there,” she said.
“People need to leave this place and have an area where they can settle a little better and where they can reorganise a better life.”
Compensation
The unrest, targeting migrants from Zimbabwe and other African countries, began near Johannesburg earlier this month.
Fifty-six people have been killed and more than 650 injured in the attacks, according to officials.
Aid agencies say the true number of displaced people is at least 80,000.
Nigeria says it will press for compensation from the South African government for its citizens who were victims of the violence.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe said that no Nigerians were killed in the attacks, but many have lost their properties and others have had their shops looted.
Many people have fled South Africa to countries including Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana.
Resentment against foreigners who are seen to be harder working and better educated than locals have been cited a factors fuelling the violence.
