Grahamstown’s Joza still at loggerheads with foreigners
A WEEK of meetings, and calls on the Joza community to co-exist peacefully with foreign nationals have not yielded much, while the rest of Grahamstown has welcomed back the men and their families who were violently chased out of the town.
A meeting on Sunday night in the predominantly black township of Joza, on the outskirts of Grahamstown, failed to reach consensus that would have seen the victims of xenophobia, the mostly Pakistani men, return.
Grahamstown police spokesperson Marli Govender said despite threats, some shopkeepers had returned to Joza, even though their presence there was not welcomed by everyone.
“Many people want them back, but there are others who won’t let them return to the area,” said Govender.
Despite the police’s claim that no foreigner had been arrested on suspicion of being a “serial killer”, some in the community continued to insist that Pakistani shopkeepers were responsible for the four dead bodies which had been found in the township, one of them mutilated while another was in an advanced stage of decomposition.
Govender said most of the foreign nationals would remain in a safe house outside Grahamstown until it was safe for them to return.
Makana municipality spokesperson Yoliswa Ramokolo said returning the foreign-born shopkeepers to Joza, where up to 50 percent of people were unemployed, was going to be a long process.
“Its not all in the community who are supportive (of their return). We have to work on them before the foreign nationals can come back to Joza,” said Ramokolo.
Jamila Raaes, married to a Pakistani businessman with shops in the Grahamstown central business district, said she had opened two of her businesses.
“But the shops in the township are still closed. Because they were vandalized, they won’t be able to operate soon,” said Raaes.
She said there was very little tension in the town’s central business district.
”One of those shops is my mother’s house. The roof was removed, along with the doors and windows,” said Raaes.