Source: SA violence against foreigners worrying | Daily News
IN THE past week, South African nationals have been attacking foreigners resident in that country as well as looting shops owned by non-South Africans. There are threats to attack drivers of foreign trucks entering that country.
This is a worrying trend because as the region’s economic powerhouse, South Africa should lead the way in working towards integration of the states in the Sadc region in line with overtures towards the removal of borders that divide the bloc’s 16-member states.
The current attacks on foreigners and their businesses is a sad reminder of the gory attack on Mozambique national Emmanuel Sithole back in 2015 when once again South African nationals attacked foreigners in Durban and areas of Johannesburg following Zulu monarch Goodwill Zwelithini’s call for foreigners to leave the country.
These attacks not only fly in the face of regional integration but threaten to strain relations between South Africa and its neighbours.
South Africa is Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner and already the Zimbabwe Cross Borders Transport Association has warned that it will stop all South African cross-border transport — including SA-registered trucks, buses and flights — from crossing borders to any African nation.
The Beitbridge Border Post, for instance, is the gateway for South African traffic into Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and even further, thus underlining the importance of keeping it open.
Besides, the attacks are barbaric and belong to pre-historic times. It is sad — even startling — that South Africans, whose neighbours bore the brunt of attacks from apartheid South Africa at the height of the struggle for liberation in that country, are the perpetrators of such attacks.
The racist apartheid regime would conduct routine destabilisation attacks on neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique among others, resulting in the death of those countries’ citizens.
It is alleged the plane crash that killed late Mozambican president Samora Machel at Mbuzini back in 1986 was masterminded by apartheid South Africa.
It is clear that there are many South Africans who live in other nations and one wonders how they would feel if those host nations were to retaliate by launching similar barbaric attacks on them.
It is not enough for South African police to arrest the looters. President Cyril Ramaphosa has to act decisively in stopping this barbarism.
Claims that foreign nationals are engaging in criminal activities in the South African nation are frivolous.
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