South African President Jacob Zuma on Saturday pleaded with foreigners to stay in South Africa as he canceled a state visit to Indonesia to deal with a wave of deadly xenophobic violence at home.
Three weeks of escalating violence in South Africa has claimed at least six lives and forced more than 5,000 immigrants to seek refuge in makeshift camps.
The unrest, which began in the eastern port city of Durban before spreading to other parts of the country, carries echoes of the riots that gripped South Africa in 2008, when 62 people were killed.
Photo: AFP
In the latest incident, police on Saturday said a foreigner died of stab wounds in Alexandra, a township north of Johannesburg. The impoverished area was the focus of much of the day’s violence, with officers firing rubber bullets to disperse looters.
More than 30 arrests were made overnight on Saturday in Johannesburg alone.
Under pressure to avoid a repeat of the 2008 bloodshed, Zuma traveled to Durban to visit a camp for foreigners displaced by the violence, but he faced a hostile reception from the crowd, who yelled: “Go home, go home” and “Too late, too late.”
“As government, we’re not saying to you: ‘go away.’ It is not every South African who is saying ‘go away.’ It is a very small number of people who say so,” Zuma said at Chatsworth camp, where he presented a check of 50,000 rands (US$4,100) to help people affected by the violence.
He vowed to end the unrest and sought to assure the crowd that there is a place for foreigners in South Africa.
“Even those who want to go home, they must know that when we have stopped the violence, they are welcome to come back,” Zuma said.
The South African leader had been scheduled to fly to Indonesia on Saturday, but he announced he was scrapping the trip “to attend to matters at home relating to the attacks on foreign nationals.”
The decision came as alarm grew within South Africa — and from the UN and foreign capitals — over the attacks. Neighboring Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique have announced plans to evacuate their citizens.
Reflecting international concern, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said most victims targeted “are refugees and asylum seekers who were forced to leave their countries due to war and persecution.”
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