JOHANNESBURG, May 18: Twelve people have been killed in a wave of weekend violence against immigrants around Johannesburg, police said on Sunday, with gangs of armed youths rampaging through poor areas in South Africa’s economic capital.
President Thabo Mbeki announced that a panel had been set up to look into the xenophobic attacks and the South African Red Cross said it had launched an appeal to help displaced people.
“Since Friday to now there have been 12 murders,” provincial police communications director Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said when asked about the troubles, which intensified over the weekend and spread to outlying areas.
Since the beginning of last week, foreigners have been targeted by mobs carrying machetes and guns in several run-down parts of the city despite pleas for calm and widespread condemnation from politicians.
Local Johannesburg police spokeswoman Cheryl Engelbrecht said that overnight violence in the inner city had left six dead, 50 people in hospital and a trail of looted shops and burnt cars.
The bulk of the immigrants who have flooded South Africa in recent years are from neighbouring Zimbabwe, with an estimated three million having fled the economic meltdown and political crisis in their country.
They have been particularly targeted as they are blamed by some locals for crime and unemployment. Some Zimbabweans say they are also accused of being behind rising food prices.
A reporter saw armed police recover the dead body of a victim midafternoon in the notorious Hillbrow area of the inner city on Sunday. They fired dozens of rubber bullets to disperse gangs in the surrounding area.
As well as the panel to look into the violence, Thabo Mbeki urged the police to act firmly against the perpetrators, the domestic news agency SAPA reported.
“We hope that the panel and the police will work together and help us answer who is behind this,” he was quoted as saying.
The head of the ruling African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, also condemned the violence.
“We cannot allow South Africa to be famous for xenophobia,” Zuma said from Pretoria, SAPA reported. “We cannot be a xenophobic country.” He recalled the role neighbouring countries had played in sheltering ANC members in their fight against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.
“We should be the last people to have this problem of having a negative attitude towards our brothers and sisters who come from outside,” he said.
Eric Goemaere, coordinator for humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Johannesburg, said the violence had intensified on Sunday, with victims describing gangs of youths raiding their homes and looking for foreigners.“The situation today is even more tense than during the week,” he told AFP.
“They (victims) say there are organised gangs of 100 to 300 youths who are breaking into homes, apartments and shacks.” “The violence is quite extreme: one woman was thrown out of a first floor window and fell on a car. There is an intention to kill.” A photographer for South Africa’s The Star newspaper said he had witnessed a man being set alight in a slum in the East Rand region, about 50kms east of Johannesburg, where violence spread on Sunday.
“We found a guy wrapped up in his belongings. They’d obviously beaten him, wrapped him up, then set fire to him,” Shayne Robinson said, adding that gangs of up to 300 youths had been confronting police.—AFP