Mobs kill foreigners seen as taking jobs in commodity boom
BY CHIP CUMMINS AND SARAH CHILDRESS
JOHANNESBURG, South AfricaThe outbreak of antiforeigner violence here puts a spotlight on the disparity between beneficiaries of the commodities boom and those left behind.
Last week and over the weekend, mobs hunted down suspected foreign residents-whom they accused of taking away jobs-shooting them, beating them to death and burning some victims alive. After 10 days of violence across this business capital's townships, officials Tuesday put the death toll at 24, with hundreds injured. A regional government official said an estimated 20,000 people have been displaced in greater Johannesburg.
Many of the most violent areas were quiet Tuesday. But police fired rubber bullets to quell crowds in a shantytown near the city, according to Reuters. President Thabo Mbeki issued a public appeal for calm Tuesd盯and said he would deal harshly with offenders. Over 200 people have been arrested.
It is a significant upheaval in a country that has avoided a repeat of the horrific apartheid-era violence of more than a decade ago. A redhot economy and a frantic scramble to be part of it have served as a backdrop to the violence.
Soaring global prices for commodities are boosting economies across sub-Saharan Africa. Regional growth is expected to have topped 6% last year and approach 7% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Earlier this year, a widening wealth gap and a presidential election in booming Kenya helped stoke violence against the country's largest tribe, which has dominated politics and business. In Nigeria, groups largely disenfranchised from the country's oil boom have attacked infrastructure and kidnapped oil workers.
South Africa's economy is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa. Amid a mining boom, foreign capital has rushed in. The benefits have largely flowed to a narrow slice of the population, enriching the wealthy and a rising black middle class.
Impoverished South Africans, most of them black, have seen little improvement. Compounding that frustration has been the growing influx of immigrants into South Africa's townships. With a per capita gross domestic product outstripping that of most of its neighbors, South Africa has drawn impoverished Malawians, Mozambicans and especially Zimbabweans fleeing their country's crumbling economy.
Amid the flood of foreign labor, many impoverished South Africans have found themselves competing for decent-paying jobs and government housing.
The violence here started last week in the central township of Alexandra, a short drive from the glitzy hotels, shopping malls and corporate campuses of Sandton, another Johannesburg ne坡hborhood. Alexandra, home to some 600,000, is a slum of shacks, many made of bricK corrugated steel or plywood. Garbage lies uncollected and goats wander the streets, which are dotted with taverns and hair salons.
Some South Africans have been on waiting lists for years for new housing units that the city is building in Alexandra. Rumors that foreigners had bought or bribed their way into government-subsidized housing have circulated for some time, according to Neria Malefetse, the communications officer for the township's police station.
It is unclear what specifically triggered the violence in Alexandra last week. After nightfall on May 11, mobs started attacking the shacks of fore逗n residents, driving hundreds to seek shelter at the township's central police station.
On the first night of violence, a mob surged toward Josephine Siebanda's small house in Alexandra. "So many," she said. "They said foreigners must go back, that we're taking their jobs." The 44-year-old Zimbabwean gathered her seven children and fled to the police station as the crowd looted and burned her home to the ground.
"The immediate challenge is to stop the violence and obviously keep it from spreading," said Thabo Masebe, deputy director of communications for the provincial government. "When we stabilize one area, another flares up."
The national and provincial governments are studying ways of dealing with the huge number of displaced people, Mr. Masebe said.
Police in Alexandra are hosting about 1,000 refugees. They have converted one room in the station into a sleeping area for women and children. Tuesday, about two dozen small children scribbled with crayons while their mothers, many of them dazed, looked on. The men sleep packed side by side in white tents erected in the station's yard.
Stuwart Kadere, 24, left Zimbabwe in January. He moved to Alexandra, where he sold leather hats, belts and other goods. On May 12 a crowd of men wielding machetes and stones pounded on his door. He fled through a window to the police station.
Mr. Kadere returned to his home the next day to find all of his possessions gone. Despite his troubles, he said he still would rather stay in South Africa than return to his own country. His T-shirt reads: "Jo'burg: A World-Class African City."
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