The death toll from two weeks of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa rose to 50 on Sunday as concerns mounted for an estimated 35,000 people displaced by the backlash.
As thousands headed for the borders to return home, a growing humanitarian crisis was developing domestically as hordes of foreigners fled their slum homes and poured into police stations, community centers and churches.
Government leaders descended on troubled spots around the country in a bid to answer criticism of official dithering as Sunday newspapers carried alarming headlines such as “State of Emergency” and “Ethnic Cleansing, SA Style.”
The president of the ruling African National Congress Jacob Zuma faced an angry crowd in a rundown area east of Johannesburg where he urged people to be tolerant of foreigners.
“Fighting won’t solve your problems but will instead exacerbate them and they will therefore remain unsolved,” he said as locals demanded the government deal with crime and unemployment they blame on immigrants.
The Red Cross in South Africa said it is caring for 25,000 destitute people around violence hotspot Johannesburg with another 10,000 sheltering at community centers in the tourist hub of Cape Town.
Police said 50 people had died in the wave of murders, rapes and looting in the Johannesburg region, which began on May 11 before spreading nationwide. An estimated 700 people have been arrested.
National police spokesman Dennis Adriao said there was fresh violence in four provinces overnight, but that there had been no new fatalities.
South African President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday night broke his virtual silence on the deadly violence against immigrants from other parts of Africa, condemning the attacks as an “absolute disgrace”.
In his first major speech to South Africa on the violence that has gripped the country for the past two weeks, the president called for an end to “cold-blooded acts of murder, brutal assault, looting” that have left more than 50 people dead and tens of thousands fleeing their homes.
But Mbeki’s televised speech came amid growing criticism of his lack of leadership during two weeks of attacks that have spread nationwide while the government stands accused of failing to act decisively to confront the violence or acknowledge its causes.
The president described the attacks as “savagery” and called on South Africans to remember the support of other countries on the continent during the struggle against apartheid. He also warned that the targeting of foreigners has spilled over to attacks on South Africans.
“What begins as attacks against people from other countries also involves, as we have seen, the killing, the raping, the looting of property belonging to fellow South Africans,” he said. “This is a time for unity. It is a time to speak with one voice against something, that if it takes root, will take us back to a past of violent conflict which no one among us can afford.”
Mbeki ruled out putting into camps the estimated 3 million refugees from Zimbabwe, and people fleeing conflict in other parts of the continent, and said they must be integrated into South African communities.
Critics have accused Mbeki of failing to heed the warning signs of looming violence and then hesitating to act when the killing began. The president waited 10 days to send troops into the townships.
South Africa’s largest-selling newspaper, the Sunday Times, said Mbeki should resign because he has “shown himself to be not only uncaring but utterly incompetent.”
“Throughout the crisis — arguably the most grave, dark and repulsive moment in the life of our young nation — Mbeki has demonstrated that he no longer has the heart to lead,” the paper said in a front-page editorial.
The government has sought to deflect charges that Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” in dealing with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe contributed to millions of Zimbabweans fleeing to South Africa, and that he then failed to treat the influx as a refugee crisis.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS