Rosettenville attacks not xenophobic, Gigaba insists

HOME Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba yesterday sought to dispel assertions that xenophobia fuelled the Rosettenville attacks.

Residents in this old Johannesburg suburb simply rose up against crime, Gigaba told reporters in Pretoria yesterday. He drew parallels to vigilante attacks on South Africans accused of crime.

A group of residents in the area attacked and burnt down several houses. They accused Nigerian tenants of peddling drugs and turning the houses into brothels.

Gigaba, pictured, said residents involved in the mob attacks stressed to him that they were not against any foreign nationals. They sought to uproot crime they believed the state was failing to address.

“[When] we went to Rosettenville, the people of [the area] themselves, bar a few exceptions, were clear that ‘we’re not acting against foreign nationals, we’re not against even Nigerian immigrants. [But] we’re against immigrants involved in crime as we would be against South Africans involved in crime’,” said Gigaba.

“You will all remember that there have been many incidents in our country where communities have taken what I would call vigilante activities against South African criminals and took the law into their own hands, which we discourage.” Gigaba said residents pleaded that “we must stop distorting them [their actions] and saying what’s happening there is about xenophobia” and that “we didn’t go randomly to burn every house where immigrants live”. He said they targeted six houses notorious for prostitution and drugs. Residents also told him children were being injected with drugs in these houses and turned into prostitutes. “We then said to them that ‘you know what, if you had reported this to us, we would have rescued the children’.”

He hinted that he would pursue this argument when he meets African Union ambassadors today. The Nigerian government has pleaded with the body to intervene and protect its nationals and other African foreigners against xenophobia in South Africa.

Rosettenville residents stressed that during the attacks they were acting because police were protecting known drug and prostitution ring leaders.

Lieutenant-General Deliwe de Lange, police commissioner in Gauteng, yesterday said police had now acted. She said they had arrested 42 suspects, including 27 undocumented foreign nationals and four for possession of or dealing in drugs.