Xenophobia: Hundreds flee as South Africa’s mobs go door-to-door

Hundreds of foreigners fearing for their lives have taken shelter in community halls on South Africa’s south coast, saying mobs of locals were going door-to-door telling them to leave the country. Many, mostly nationals of Malawi and Mozambique, told journalists they had fled their homes at the weekend and spent nights in the mountains and […]

Hundreds of foreigners fearing for their lives have taken shelter in community halls on South Africa’s south coast, saying mobs of locals were going door-to-door telling them to leave the country.

Many, mostly nationals of Malawi and Mozambique, told journalists they had fled their homes at the weekend and spent nights in the mountains and bush, before making their way to the small-town community centres.

“They said ‘you are a foreigner, you don’t belong in South Africa, so you must go’,” Mozambican Thomas Vincent Baloyi told AFP in Gansbaai, around 110 kilometres (70 miles) southeast of Cape Town.

“I said, ‘No, I got documents to be here in South Africa’. They didn’t want to know,” said Baloyi, who has been in the country for nearly 16 years, working in construction and gardening.

“They just chased us away like dogs… that is unfair because, actually, I’m a human being,” the 32-year-old said. “We just stayed in the bush until six in the morning.”

Weeks of mostly small protests across South Africa against irregular foreign nationals exploded into violence at the weekend in the town of Mossel Bay, 250 kilometres up the coast, where 55 shacks were torched.

The South African police said two people from Mozambique were killed “during activities associated with anti-foreigner demonstrations”.

The deaths are the first linked to a new wave of anti-migrant protests by fringe groups that accuse undocumented foreign nationals of crime and taking scarce jobs and resources away from locals.

After one anti-illegal migrant group set a June 30 deadline for undocumented migrants to go home, small bands of people brandishing whips, sticks, wooden clubs and sometimes axes are reported to have taken to the streets in various places to reinforce the ultimatum.

 

Ghana has already flown home 300 of its citizens, with hundreds more due to leave this weekend, and Nigeria has also announced emergency repatriation flights.

 

Meanwhile, the South African police have warned anti-immigration groups on Wednesday against taking the law into their own hands.

 

Lieutenant-General Tebello Mosikili said security forces would not allow any group to “take the law into its own hands, conduct unlawful operations, intimidate communities, target individuals based on their nationality.

 

“There is no grievance, concern, frustration or cause that can justify murder, assault, intimidation, arson, looting, xenophobic attacks or any other form of criminal conduct.

 

“Violence is not activism. Intimidation is not community protection.”