generalspeaking

Civilized South Africa

"Due to the tension created by the attacks, the Government of Nigeria wished to advice [sic] Nigerians to avoid travelling to high risk and volatile areas [specifically, South Africa] until the situation is brought under control."
Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- travel advisory

Tiwa Savage

@TiwaSavage

"I refuse to watch the barbaric butchering of my people in SA. This is SICK. For this reason I will NOT be performing at the upcoming DSTV delicious Festival in Johannesburg on the 21st of September. My prayers are with all the victims and families affected by this."

Nigerian superstar

 

"The issue of foreign nationals, blaming them for many things which are not going well in the country and also the law enforcement and the economic conditions in the country, all of these combined, if not managed well, then create this cyclical tension between foreign nationals and locals, especially those who are in the margins because the middle class and those who are in the upper class, you hardly ever hear of such tension getting into this level."

Somadoda Fikeni, policy and political analyst. University of South Africa, Pretoria

A group of South African men gathered in Johannesburg for a second night of anti-foreigner rioting on Tuesday Getty Images

Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, is condemning the "xenophobic violence" exhibited by South Africans against the presence in the country of their neighbours from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Burundi. But it is largely people from Nigeria who have been a target of South African violence, accused of drug trafficking. Pakistan too has been a source of foreign residents in South Africa. This is a country that is no stranger to xenophobia and violence arising from it.

In the latest, three-day rampage of rioting, five foreign residents of South Africa have thus far lost their lives. In previous years there were also lives lost when South Africans, whose unemployment rate is astronomical at about 28 percent, have rioted against the presence of other Africans whom, they claim, will work for less than South Africans and who are taking away their job prospects, a timeworn trope of hostility to the presence of foreign elements.

Is this racism? Of which Africans everywhere claim has led to the slow pace of development on the continent, still suffering from the days of colonialism when European powers eviscerated the continent, hauling off its natural resources, including its people for slave labour to enhance, advance, and benefit the future wealth of the West. Seldom mentioned of course is that Arab traders and sometimes black Africans themselves led and fed the slave trade, and countries like Mali still honour slavery.

Police have been dispatched to restore order, with the help of rubber bullets, where sections of Johannesburg hoping to avoid the violence appear abandoned, the wealthy and connected remaining out of sight, as the labouring demographic vent their fury at foreigners. Mobs plundered Alexandra, burning and looting foreign-owned shops, with police officers futilely firing rubber bullets in the hopes of dispersing the crowds.

The thousands of South Africans rioting through urban areas in an expression of their anti-foreigner fury must blame someone for their plight when one government after another, corrupt and incompetent has done little to improve the economic prospects of its citizens. Shop owners were set upon indiscriminately by the crowds, beaten insensible. The word was that they were in particular "going for Nigerians as they do drugs".

The past weekend saw South African truckers on strike, blockading roads to protest the employment of foreign drivers. According to police estimates, about 200 drivers were injured or killed on the highway between Johannesburg and Durban last year, with over 2000 trucks attacked.

Violence and looting of immigrant-owned shops broke out in South Africa Sunday and has sparked angry reactions across the continent.

Labels: Foreighners, Looting, Riots, South Africa, Violence

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, September 05, 2019