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Xenophobia: A war of the poor against the poor

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Police inspect the damage caused after locals looted and burnt properties belonging to foreigners in Pretoria West. Picture: Elizabeth Sejake
Police inspect the damage caused after locals looted and burnt properties belonging to foreigners in Pretoria West. Picture: Elizabeth Sejake

Following attacks of xenophobia in Pretoria this weekend, a group of organisations is set to march in a bid to fostering unity in the community.

Outraged by the Mamelodi Concerned Residents’ march, set to take place on Friday, the Workers Socialist Party is organising a counter demonstration to what they call a “xenophobic march”.

The Workers Socialist Party has formed a coalition with various organisations and non-governmental organisations, including 10 organisations representing different countries in Africa.

“The key triggers for xenophobic sentiments and subsequently attacks are profound ignorance, unjustified fear and a culture of gratuitous violence,” said Norman Taku, assistant director at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights.

“Xenophobia in South Africa is a war of the poor against the poor,” said Mametlwe Sebei from the Workers Socialist Party and executive coordinator of the coalition.

He argued that poverty and hunger of the masses, and subsequently, intolerable levels of crime were factors that created a breeding ground for xenophobia.

A group of residents who call themselves the Mamelodi Concerned Residents accuse foreigners – specifically Nigerians, Zimbabweans and Pakistanis – as perpetrators of selling drugs and prostitutes in the area.

Sebei said crimes were equally committed by foreigners as they were by South Africans and that foreigners were not to blame for the breakdown in communities.

In pamphlet signed by the group, they noted South Africa’s high unemployment rate as another point of concern.

Taku said: “It is not statistically factual, but rather anecdotal, that foreigners steal the jobs of South Africans.”

The Workers Socialist Party stressed that: “Problems such as unemployment, drugs, prostitution and crime are very serious problems.

"They make life in working class and poor communities harder than it already is. But these problems are not caused by poor working class foreign residents.”

The party’s approach to the issue is fostering unity in the community.

“This is really a failure of the system to deliver services and create jobs, we need to unite, not divide and fragment our societies,” said Sebei.

People taking the law into their own hands have already been condemned by Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba.

Taku said: “We live in a state based on human rights and the rule of law.

"The government has a primary, primordial and pressing responsibility to provide protection for foreigners at risk of xenophobic violence and to prosecute vigorously those who commit these acts of violence.”

South Africans have been making their contributions on twitter via the hashtags #NoToXenophobia:





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