Anti-immigrant violence spreads across South Africa

PRESIDENT ZUMA CONDEMNS PROTESTS THAT HAVE CLAIMED FOUR LIVES IN TWO WEEKS

South African police fired rubber bullets and tear gas yesterday to disperse anti-immigrant protesters in Johannesburg, as the country’s president called for a halt to a wave of violence directed at foreigners.

Around 200 protesters, shouting that they wanted immigrants to leave, had pelted passing vehicles and police with rocks in an eastern suburb of the country’s biggest commercial city, triggering the show of force.

At least four people have been killed in the unrest that started two weeks ago in Durban, a major port on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast where further clashes broke out yesterday.

Violence flared days after Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini said in remarks reported by local media that foreigners should leave South Africa. He has since said his comments were misinterpreted.

The foreign ministry of China, a major trade partner, said Chinese-run shops had been damaged in Johannesburg. The Chinese consulate lodged a protest with the police and asked that they ensure the safety of Chinese people.

Johannesburg was the epicentre of anti-foreigner attacks in 2008 that killed more than 60 people as locals vented frustrations over various issues, particularly the high level of unemployment that plagues Africa’s most advanced economy.

Addressing parliament in Cape Town yesterday, President Jacob Zuma reiterated his condemnation of the violence, calling it a “violation” of South Africa’s values.

“No amount of frustration or anger can ever justify the attacks on foreign nationals and the looting of their shops,” he said. “We condemn the violence in the strongest possible terms.

“The attacks violate all the values that South Africa embodies.”

Zuma also said the government was taking steps to secure its porous borders and making progress in setting up a border management agency, announced last year and scheduled to be up and running in 2016.

South Africa has erected safe camps for fleeing immigrants whose shops were looted and burnt in Durban, where hundreds of people took part in a peace march yesterday.

Only a few blocks away, however, fresh skirmishes broke out between foreign nationals, locals and police.