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.
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