A mob of several hundred turned up at a migrant center in South Africa’s Soweto township — unemployed, wielding weapons and angry with foreigners they accuse of taking their jobs.
They shouted: “Foreigners, go home,” witnesses said.
With unemployment at 35 percent — and rising up to 65 percent among young people — competition for jobs has spawned resentment among some unemployed South Africans.
Photo: AFP
In the past, xenophobic protests have morphed into violence. Attacks against foreigners left at least 62 people dead in 2008, while another seven were killed in similar unrest in 2015.
Armed mobs descended on foreign-owned businesses around Johannesburg in 2019.
The ensuing clashes left at least 12 people dead, of whom 10 were South African, the government has said.
In the past few weeks, scores of protesters have been staging demonstrations against undocumented migrants in what they have dubbed Operation Dudula, which means “drive back” in Zulu.
At a Methodist migrant community center in Soweto, where about 100 migrant families live, there had been rumors of an attack.
A large group of people arrived earlier this month — some wielding traditional leather whips — at the center in South Africa’s most famous township, south of Johannesburg.
“Foreign nationals are stealing jobs that belong to South Africans,” witnesses quoted protesters as saying.
Sithulisiwe Chinora, a 22-year-old Zimbabwean, said that she started shaking violently, her infant wrapped on her back.
“I thought I was going to die that day,” she said.
Father Paul Verryn, who founded the center, said it was clear who the protesters were.
“They are xenophobic activists, they clearly targeted foreign nationals because they want them out,” said Verryn, who is famous for having opened a church in Johannesburg to thousands of undocumented Zimbabweans after the first anti-immigration attacks.
However, the Operation Dudula movement says it is pacifist.
Its leader, Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, a man in his 30s from Soweto who often dresses in a military uniform and bullet-proof vest, said he is simply seeking to “restore law and order.”
“The law enforcement is failing us,” he has told reporters.
On Saturday, Dlamini was among about 2,000 people protesting in Johannesburg’s inner city suburb of Hillbrow.
Among the crowd, Bhekani Thusi, 38, was one of those who said they were “tired of foreigners.”
“We are here to claim our land back. Our space is occupied by foreigners,” he said.
Last weekend, the same movement held a protest outside a supermarket demanding the sacking of foreign workers employed there.
“There is [nothing] xenophobic about that, it’s the law,” he said. “Any job that doesn’t require skill in South Africa belongs to South Africans.”
About 3.9 million foreigners live in South Africa, a country of almost 60 million, including political refugees, official statistics showed.
Human Rights Watch says foreigners are often made scapegoats in a country with one of the world’s most unequal societies.
Jay Naidoo, founding general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said anti-immigrant arguments do not hold up.
“Even if they were to expel all the immigrants, our level of crime would not drop, neither our level of joblessness,” he said.
So far, the latest demonstrations have not spiraled into violence.
A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said law enforcement is keeping an eye on the demonstrations.
However, “the right to protest is enshrined in the country’s constitution, and so far, they haven’t committed any action that required the police to enforce the law,” the source said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday said that authorities were closely watching “pockets of groupings that are trying to foment a type of negative attitudes” toward foreigners.
At the beginning of the month, the government said it was working on a law to install a quota for foreign workers in South African companies.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS