‘Stop killing us’

Up to 200 Somalis marched in Cape Town on parliament on Friday morning to deliver a memorandum urging the government to act against the ongoing xenophobia attacks on them around the country. "We need protection - simple as that," one of the organisers, Abdullahi Ali Hassan, told AFP. Amid widespread poverty and unemployment, frustration in South Africa's run-down neighbourhoods often boils over into anti-immigrant violence.

An explosion of deadly attacks in 2008 killed more than 60 people and displaced thousands into refugee-style camps. At least 140 foreigners were killed and 250 seriously injured last year, according to the African Centre for Migration and Society. This year has seen at least three major incidents every week, the centre said last month.

On Friday the protesters chanted calls for protection and peace with one placard simply urging "Stop killing Somalians". "We want to be treated like brothers and sisters of South Africa, not like enemies, not like foreigners," said Hassan. "We come from the African continent, so we want to be treated like community members."

The marchers carried printouts of screen grabs of a video said to be of a naked Somali man being brutally stoned to death in a public street in the city of Port Elizabeth. However, police spokesperson Stanley Jarvis in Port Elizabeth told AFP that the shopkeeper had been stabbed last Thursday. He said the origin of the video had not been verified.

Reaction
In its response to the Somali immigrants' call for greater protection, government slammed the wave of "heinous" anti-foreigner attacks. Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane expressed the government's "strongest condemnation" of the violence that has recently seen looting and the death of a Somali shopkeeper. "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, and we, therefore, have been appalled and deeply saddened by the recent acts of violence against Somalis and other foreign nationals in South Africa," she told a media briefing.

Nkoana-Mashabane paid homage and expressed "sincere gratitude" to Africa's support to the country's anti-apartheid liberation struggle, including from Somalis. "The looting, displacement and killing of foreign nationals in South Africa should not be viewed as xenophobic attacks, but opportunistic criminal acts that have the potential to undermine the unity and cohesiveness of our communities," she said. "There is no cause to justify this heinous crime."

In it's reaction, the Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) said on Friday that xenophobia attacks in South Africa have not ended. "It has been five years since [2008, when] co-ordinated attacks exploded across the country and led to the deaths of 64 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more," the head of LHR's strategic litigation unit, David Cote, said in a statement.

"Although the violence itself only lasted for a few weeks, the lingering fear has never quite gone away. This is partly due to the fact that these attacks never really ended." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released figures showing that at least three incidents a week were reported in 2012, LHR said.

"Those not killed have been severely injured." He said there was no way of determining how much had been lost in business and property after attacks in Sasolburg, Orange Farm, Diepsloot, Booysens Park, and Sebokeng. Last month, police reported unrest at Diepsloot, after Somali businessman Bishar Isaack was arrested for allegedly shooting dead two men, believed to be Zimbabweans, outside his shop when they allegedly tried to rob him.

Afterwards, residents stoned the shop and looted it and other businesses in the area. Police arrested 45 people for public violence, housebreaking, and possession of unlicensed firearms. In the same month, more than 90 people were arrested for protest-related crimes in Evaton, Orange Farm, and Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg. Complaints of looting and vandalism of spaza shops belonging to foreigners were reported.

Violence also flared in Port Elizabeth, in Eastern Cape, where Somali shop owners were targeted. Cote said the other reason xenophobia never went away was because nothing had really been done to end the attacks, or start the healing process. "Even more disturbing is the government's denial of the real threat of xenophobia. Hate crime legislation, which would prioritise such crimes, has been languishing in committees for years."