Jo'burg full blown bongo party

[Rasp]

SA kaffirs welcome refugees wif open "arms"



House-to-house hunt of terror

Mobs brandishing rocks and sticks were roving the streets of battlefield Alexandra this morning, defying a heavy police contingent.

"We don't want them back here. This is not f***ing Zimbabwe," yelled Xolani Maphumulo as the crowd threw furniture looted from the homes of foreigners on to a blaze.

Fires engulfing the possessions of immigrants poured black smoke into the sky as the xenophobic violence went into a fourth day.

The mob vented their fury on foreign residents on 8th and 16th avenues in the besieged township.

Taxis passing along London Road hooted and their passengers cheered as timber, cardboard, wooden and metal bed frames, plastic buckets and dishes were set alight.

Some locals were seen moving their furniture into shacks from which foreigners had fled.

Wednesday's outbreak came after a long night of violence.

On Tuesday night hundreds of people gathered on a hill overlooking Extension 7, a well-lit suburb of RDP houses singing war songs and brandishing the weapons they planned to use to drive out the foreigners.

They chanted: "They've taken our houses!"

With sticks and trolley-loads of rocks, they moved down from their squatter camp to vent their rage.

So began one of the most gruelling nights in Alexandra and a terrifying door-to-door hunt for foreigners.

Through the night, police clashed with rioters in what one officer, with 19 years of service, described as the worst violence since the early 1990s.

Police came under fire from criminals armed with handguns and even AK-47s.

The mob blamed government corruption for allocating housing to what they said were illegal immigrants, while locals were forced to live in a squatter camp.

Shouting and banging on doors, they demanded residents prove their nationality with ID books.

Some rioters flashed their own green ID books, shouting "Voertsek!" as home owners stood in their doorways and egged them on.

When families refused to open up, they kicked open the doors and shook and hammered burglar bars with sticks.

In one clash, a rioter and a man defending a local woman battled it out with metal pipes.

By the time the fight was broken up by police, one of the men had blood streaming down his face.

As the mob swept down the streets they sang "Umshini wami" (bring me my machine gun) the struggle song made popular by Jacob Zuma.

They flung stones at police as they rushed into the area.

As police responded with a hail of rubber bullets, stones rained down on their vehicles and into the streets.

Before long, a running battle was under way with officers arresting rioters hiding behind walls and inside front yards.

Shots fired by unidentified gunmen rang out as the mob retreated.

Police and Metro Police raced from one scene to another.

They travelled in long convoys through the narrow streets and made spot arrests.

In one incident, police came across a man curled on the ground in pain. He had been shot, apparently through both legs, and left on the deserted road.

He would not say who had shot him or why.

Meanwhile police have confirmed that a 17-year-old was shot and had been rushed to hospital.

And Alexandra police spokeswoman Constable Neria Malefetse said a 14-year-old boy had come to the station with a stab wound. He too was taken to hospital.

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VIDEO!

Warning: content may offend sensitive viewers.

Scores of foreigners were attacked by local residents in Alexandra north-east of Johannesburg. Two people were killed and 30 others injured. Listen to why the residents of Alexandra are taking matters into their own hands.

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Winnie puts da spin on

‘No campaign to drive out foreigners’

There is no campaign to drive foreigners out of Alexandra, said African National Congress (ANC) provincial chairman, Paul Mashatile, outside the home of a victim of alleged xenophobic attacks in the Johannesburg township today.



Mashatile said the violence that erupted in Alexandra was "an act of criminality" and expressed the party’s concern over the situation.

ANC NEC member Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, accompanied by MECs from Gauteng and senior ANC leadership figures in the province, visited the families of the two victims who died to sympathise with them.

South African citizen Pretty Nzama is the wife of the South African victim of the attacks. Her husband Siphiwe was killed in the attacks on Sunday night.

Nzama was visited by Madikizela-Mandela who prayed with her.

She said men came into her home and shot her husband for no reason leaving her and her seven-year-old child behind.

Earlier curious onlookers lined the street as Madikizela-Mandela was accompanied by her large security contingency.

She was also followed by a number of media representatives in their vehicles, bringing traffic in the township to a halt.

Earlier the former wife of Nelson Mandela spoke to foreign residents who were displaced by the violence and had sought shelter at the Alexandra police station.

"I am sorry...It is not all South Africans that are like this," she told the group.

Madikizela-Mandela’s visit came three days after the eruption of violence and xenophobic attacks in the sprawling township north of Johannesburg.

[Davy of old England]

Deadly clashes in Johannesburg



At least five people have been burnt or beaten to death in the South African city of Johannesburg as violence against immigrants spreads. More than 50 other people were taken to hospital in the suburb of Cleveland with stab or bullet wounds. The trouble began a week ago in the sprawling township of Alexandra.

Immigrants from neighbouring African countries were set upon by men with guns and iron bars chanting "kick the foreigners out". Terrified Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Malawians fled to the safety of the local police station and to another township, Diepsloot.

They were then attacked there as well - shacks were burnt down and shops looted. The violence has since spread to another three areas. Since the end of apartheid, millions of African immigrants have poured into South Africa seeking jobs and sanctuary. But they have become scapegoats for many of the country's (TNB) social problems, its high rate of unemployment, a shortage of housing and one of the worst levels of crime in the world.

Full story at top link..

[madkins]

Twelve people have been killed in South Africa's city of Johannesburg
since Friday in a wave of attacks against immigrants, officials say.
WARNING: Readers may find some of the following images upsetting.


BBC.-In Pictures

Johannesburg violence

May 19, 2008


At least two people were burned and three others beaten to death by
mobs armed with guns and machetes.


Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to prevent armed thugs from attacking
foreigners and looting their property.


Hundreds of foreigners also took refuge in churches and police stations,
amid fears of further violence.

Skara Brae

[Rasp]

Anti-Immigrant Violence Continues in South Africa



A mob of South Africans marching on Sunday through a squatter settlement near Johannesburg, where immigrants, many from Zimbabwe, have been attacked



A policeman used a fire extinguisher to try to save a man who had been set on fire by a mob during anti-immigrant clashes

[madkins]

At least 42 people have been killed and some 15,000 have sought shelter from the mobs.


BBC.-Africa

Exodus after South Africa attacks

May 22, 2008

Several thousand foreigners have fled South Africa after days of violent attacks by angry mobs.

Mozambique is laying on special buses, which have taken some 9,000 people home this week, an official said.

Some Zimbabweans are also going home, preferring to risk the violence there than stay in South Africa.

At least 42 people have been killed and some 15,000 have sought shelter from the mobs, who blame foreigners for high crime and unemployment.

The army is to be deployed in South Africa to contain the violence - for the first time since the end of apartheid.

Police in Johannesburg, where most of the attacks have taken place, say the situation is now much quieter than in recent days.

But attacks have been reported in North-West province for the first time, after violence in Durban in recent days.

The police have used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds.

There were also attacks in the north-eastern Mpumalanga province.

"Two buses were burnt last night and one Mozambican guy was shot. He is in hospital," said police spokeswoman Sibongile Nkosi.

Chaotic scenes

"I am just scared for my life," Henry, a 24-year-old Zimbabwean, told the BBC as he prepared to board a bus taking him home.

"I have a little girl at home - I want to see her grow up," he said after seeing a man shot dead at the weekend.

SOUTH AFRICA
Foreign population: 3-5m
Majority from Zimbabwe, also Mozambique, Nigeria
Total population: 49m
Unemployment rate: 30%

How can S Africa end the violence?
Tensions erupt in city of promise
Bloggers want end to violence

"I think Zimbabwe is safe."

Some three million Zimbabweans are believed to be in South Africa, fleeing poverty and violence at home.

The BBC's Karen Allen saw chaotic scenes and scuffles at a Johannesburg police station, as Mozambicans tried to scramble on board buses to take them home.

She says that those who could not get places spent the night in waste ground outside the police station, during the southern hemisphere winter.

Many had been beaten and had their property stolen.

Leonardo Boby, deputy national director of migration, said that about 3,000 people had returned to Mozambique each day this week so far.

"We are having hectic moments with the return of these people," he said.

At least eight of those killed are thought to be from Mozambique.

Tavern attacked

The violence also spread to the port city of Durban on Tuesday, where some 700 African migrants sought refuge in a church.

"A mob of plus/minus 200 were gathering on the streets carrying bottles and knobkerries [wooden clubs] busy attacking people on the streets," provincial police spokeswoman Superintendent Phindile Radebe told AFP news agency.

"They attacked one of the taverns there believed to be owned by Nigerians," she said.

A defence ministry spokesman said soldiers would only be deployed onto the streets when requested by the police.

The attacks on foreigners began 11 May in the township of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, before spreading to the city centre and across the Gauteng region.

Mobs have been roaming townships looking for foreigners, many of whom have sought refuge in police stations, churches and community halls.

Kgalema Motlanthe, secretary general of the ruling ANC, on Wednesday said many of the immigrants were able to get jobs in South Africa because they were better qualified than the locals, whose education was disrupted by apartheid(blame the White guy!).

He said there was an "envy from South African sisters and brothers, who did not have the opportunity to acquire this education or skills.

"We need to address the young generation without skills in order to enable them to make a living."

Skara Brae,

madkins