Anti-Immigration Protests Ignite in South Africa
By Mariah McCloskey
International News Writer
Police fired rubber bullets and arrested 189 people in the township of Alexandra and arrested almost 100 people after protesters torched cars and looted dozens of shops.
The riots came after hundreds of people marched in Johannesburg’s Central Business District (CBD) demanding foreigners, specifically Nigerians, leave. They targeted “shops they believed to be owned by foreign nationals,” News24, a South African news agency reported. The rioting has killed at least five people in Johannesburg and Pretoria during the riots, and many larger South African companies closed in Nigeria after attacks reached some of their stores.
Many stores are not only looted but set ablaze, leaving absolutely nothing for the shopkeepers but empty pockets. “They burnt everything,” Bangladeshi shop owner Kamrul Hasan told the AFP news agency in Alexandra, adding that his shop gets attacked every three to six months.
South African Police Minister Bheki Cele believes that this violence may not be purely xenophobic in their intent. “Xenophobia is just an excuse that is being used by people to commit criminal acts,” Al Jazeera reported.
The ruling party have issued their reaction to the latest round of xenophobia-driven protests according to The South African, condemning the violence and insisting “there is no justification” for the unsavory scene protestors have left Johannesburg and other major South African cities in. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed to clamp down on what he described as “acts of wanton violence,” according to Al Jazeera.
After two weeks of enduring these xenophobic attacks, an envoy of Nigerian government officials told the The South African that at least 600 of the country’s citizens were going to be repatriated from South Africa. A team of Nigerian government officials that were sent to South Africa, in response to the continued violence against foreign nationals we bore witness to last week, confirmed that the country was ready to repatriate its citizens from Gauteng, and other affected provinces.
This, Nigeria’s Consul General, Godwin Adamu stated was an effort to provide the necessary assistance to those who are living in fear of their safety. The next phase, according to The South African, was to assess the needs of the estimated 100,000 Nigerians who live in South Africa.
The president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari is still scheduled to meet with Ramaphosa in October. Both nations are hopeful that the current diplomatic tensions, spurred by the recent xenophobic attacks, will finally end.
Contact Mariah at mariah.mccloskey@student.shu.edu