BBC NEWS | World | Johannesburg violence spreads <<< A video into the news!!!!

Have the South Africans Forgotten apatheid??
I mean, why all the hatred and animosity??.....


Deadly clashes in Johannesburg
By Caroline Hawley
BBC News, Johannesburg

A man runs from South African police as they take up positions in the Diepsloot township north of Johannesburg 15 May 2008
Police have been trying to restore order in Diepsloot township

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.

Alexandra township
The violence first broke out in Alexandra township
The attacks have prompted soul searching among South Africans.

Last week Nelson Mandela expressed his concern, saying the country must not descend into what he called "destructive divisiveness".

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 social problems - its high rate of unemployment, a shortage of housing and one of the worst levels of crime in the world.

The South African Red Cross is now providing food and blankets to hundreds of frightened immigrants forced from their homes.

One Zimbabwean immigrant told the BBC he now intended to flee back into his country because, he said, it was better to die at home where at least his family could visit his grave

Shamefull...so very shameful that they have reduced themselves to the level of killing each other for "scraps of lowly jobs" whilsts whites builds their own quarters on their back yards. Shouldn't this pathetic of a rioting happen when they were told to forgive whiteys for all the evil they put them through???

I swear our people are suffering from some MAJOR internalised MENTAL illnesses!

A while back, Congolese families (fleeing teh fighting the NE part of the country)were chased off Congo Brazzaville and Angola....yet, when these countries had troubles of their own, thousands of people in my country offered them shelters without them even asking.

Sometimes i just think our race could do with some proper clean up of useless eaters. There is absolutely NO excuse for what they have done.....Like i said, throughout the almost 30 years of Angolan civil wars, millions of them entered Congo, and they were received with the little we had(remember this was when we had loony dictator Mobutu as president)

I am too ashamed of them Azanians.....some people are just bad hearted, pure and simple!

Oh and another thing....maybe these mongrels will do well to remember that during aparthied, Mozambique andZimbabwe welcomed them in their thousands. It's amazing that the citizens of the same countries that welcomed them in their time of need are now the ones they are blaming, hounding and killing. Why are they not kicking off the fuss to get white people off their most fertile lands? Ungrateful idiots...i keep seeing this kind of stories about in Africa and it's really, really pissing me off. Its so bloody embarrassing....and beyond words!

Its a shame these idiots do not show the same these days anger when white people come into there lands.

They will probably give them the carpet treatment.

I remember hearing about a similar thing going on in the northern part of the Ivory Coast. Where the people in the northern region started to attack africans who had immigrated to the Ivory Coast (who had come from African countries which are north of Ivory Coast, i.e Mali) who had set up businesses.

What a disgrace.

If it isn't inter-tribal clashes, then it's inter-nation clashes...why spill the blood of your fellow African??....they are facing the same struggle as U...

there are even people being burned!!
to treat people like an outcast is one thing, but when it turns into savage attacks and killings you are totally twisted.....

and the other people who look down on us are just sitting back easy nodding to themselves.


We have a long road to travel, before we are truly free.

Oh just piss off! If(and thats a big IF) when they first arrive, YOUR kind is the first experience of what BA Are, then i don't blame them. Besides, i don't believe a word you say because you are poison! You hate anything and everyone African....i bet you are one them pathetic idiots who thinks we all live in mud huts and are walking HIV carriers......so for the last time, just don't respond to me if you gone moan about stupidness. If it was someone else, i would debate with them, but if i detect the kind of tone that you use, in regard to Africa, i will not bother with you. You are not here simply to say how abhorent the SA's behaviour is...you are here simply to gloat and use this incident to prove what a backward bunch we are......anyways, like i said, just piss off....cause you chat bollocks too much...

***restraint***

Deadly Clashes in SA

Check the sensationalism in the headline

@BL

Have they forgotton the past?...They are still living it...The Zimbabwean (the only one interviewed at the end. I wonder what he meant by, There goes that song again..."To be poor is a crime"

Quite ironic that Black South Africans, who were welcomed with open arms all around the world when they were fleeing apartheid, are now beating their fellow Black Africans to death for fleeing oppression and poverty. SAD! How quickly we forget where we've been.

Not a new problem

The following chronology looks back at the problem of xenophobia since South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994.

1994

• The Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) threatens to take "physical action" if the government fails to respond to the perceived crisis of undocumented migrants in South Africa.

• IFP leader and Minister of Home Affairs Mangosutho Buthelezi says in his first speech to parliament: "If we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa, then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Programme."

• In December gangs of South Africans try to evict perceived "illegals" from Alexandra township, blaming them for increased crime, sexual attacks and unemployment. The campaign, lasting several weeks, is known as "Buyelekhaya" (Go back home).

1995

• A report by the Southern African Bishops' Conference concludes: "There is no doubt that there is a very high level of xenophobia in our country ... One of the main problems is that a variety of people have been lumped together under the title of 'illegal immigrants', and the whole situation of demonising immigrants is feeding the xenophobia phenomenon."



1997

• Defence Minister Joe Modise links the issue of undocumented migration to increased crime in a newspaper interview.

• In a speech to parliament, Home Affairs Minister Buthelezi claims "illegal aliens" cost South African taxpayers "billions of rands" each year.

• A study co-authored by the Human Sciences Research Council and the Institute for Security Studies reports that 65 percent of South Africans support forced repatriation of undocumented migrants. White South Africans are found to be most hostile to migrants, with 93 percent expressing negative attitudes.

• Local hawkers in central Johannesburg attack their foreign counterparts. The chairperson of the Inner Johannesburg Hawkers Committee is quoted as saying: "We are prepared to push them out of the city, come what may. My group is not prepared to let our government inherit a garbage city because of these leeches."

• A Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) survey of migrants in Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe shows that very few would wish to settle in South Africa. A related study of migrant entrepreneurs in Johannesburg finds that these street traders create an average of three jobs per business.


1998

• Three non-South Africans are killed on a train travelling between Pretoria and Johannesburg in what is described as a xenophobic attack.

• In December The Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign is launched by a partnership of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the National Consortium on Refugee Affairs and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

• The Department of Home Affairs reports that the majority of deportations are of Mozambicans (141,506) followed by Zimbabweans (28,548)

1999

• A report by the SAHRC notes that xenophobia underpins police action against foreigners. People are apprehended for being "too dark" or "walking like a black foreigner". Police also regularly destroy documents of black non-South Africans.
2000

• Sudanese refugee James Diop is seriously injured after being thrown from a train in Pretoria by a group of armed men. Kenyan Roy Ndeti and his room mate are shot in their home. Both incidents are described as xenophobic attacks.

• In Operation Crackdown, a joint police and army sweep, over 7,000 people are arrested on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. In contrast, only 14 people are arrested for serious crimes.

• A SAHRC report on the Lindela deportation centre, a holding facility for undocumented migrants, lists a series of abuses at the facility, including assault and the systematic denial of basic rights. The report notes that 20 percent of detainees claimed South African citizenship or that they were in the country legally.

2001

• According to the 2001 census, out of South Africa's population of 45 million, just under one million foreigners are legally resident in the country. However, the Department of Home Affairs estimates there are more than seven million undocumented migrants.

2004

• Protests erupt at Lindela over claims of beatings and inmate deaths, coinciding with hearings into xenophobia by SAHRC and parliament's portfolio committee on foreign affairs.


2006

• Cape Town's Somali community claim that 40 traders have been the victims of targeted killings between August and September.

• Somali-owned businesses in the informal settlement of Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg, are repeatedly torched.

2007

• In March UNHCR notes its concern over the increase in the number of xenophobic attacks on Somalis. The Somali community claims 400 people have been killed in the past decade.

• In May more than 20 people are arrested after shops belonging to Somalis and other foreign nationals are torched during anti-government protests in Khutsong township, a small mining town about 50km southwest of Johannesburg.

• According to the International Organisation of Migration, 177,514 Zimbabweans deported from South Africa pass through their reception centre across the border in Beitbridge since its opening in May 2006.

2008


• In March human rights organisations condemn a spate of xenophobic attacks around Pretoria that leave at least four people dead and hundreds homeless.

Sources include: Human Rights Watch, SAMP, SAHRC, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

**Thought I posted in here?**

Judging from Tahlibas post it looks like certain people are pushing for the countries collapse. You don't talk like that in politics without knowing the consequences.