The rumor mill, a few recent xenophobic attacks and memories of countrywide attacks on foreign nationals two years ago have combined to create an exodus of people from the coastal city of Cape Town to their home countries or South Africa’s rural areas.
A Somali trader was killed just over a week ago in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, and on 6 July a Zimbabwean national, Reason Wandi, was thrown from a moving train by passengers and suffered serious injuries.
He told local media that just before the attack, “They [passengers] said, ‘they must go back home to their countries, makwerekweres’.” Makwerekwere is a pejorative term for foreign black Africans.
Ancelot Mbayagu, a Burundian national living in South Africa and chairman of the African Disabled Refugee Organisation, told IRIN it was difficult to quantify the number of people fleeing because they feared xenophobia in the past few days, but it could be more than 10,000. However, he cautioned that migrants were a mobile population and some might be leaving because seasonal work had finished, which would distort the figure.
During the countdown to the soccer world cup there were widespread reports of a whispering campaign against foreign nationals, warning them to leave South Africa before the end of the tournament on 11 July or face dire consequences. Foreign nationals, especially those residing in the country’s marginalized communities, are often accused of “stealing” jobs and houses from locals.
In May 2008 xenophobic violence erupted in Johannesburg and quickly spread through most parts of the country, killing more than 60 people – about a third of whom were South African nationals – and displacing about 100,000 others.
Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
SOUTH AFRICA: Rumours of xenophobia send foreign nationals fleeing
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