Scores arrested in S.Africa looting, attacks on foreigners

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP |  South African police on Monday arrested dozens of people following widespread looting and protests in the transport industry linked to a wave of anti-foreigner sentiment.

At least 70 people have been arrested since hundreds of people marched through Johannesburg’s Central Business District (CBD) earlier on Monday, plundering shops and torching cars and buildings, the police said in a statement.

The unrest started on Sunday when an old building in the CBD caught fire and collapsed, killing at least three people.

It then spread to two eastern suburbs and to the capital Pretoria, where local media reported shops burning in the Marabastad – a central business area largely populated by economic migrants.

Police also said they were investigating a death in Hillbrow, a residential neighbourhood in central Johannesburg, where a “member of the public” was allegedly shot by a group.

“At this stage police are still interviewing several people to establish the motive,” said a statement by the provincial commissioner.

Such violence breaks out sporadically in South Africa, where many nationals blame immigrants for high unemployment, particularly in manual labour.

South Africa is a major destination for economic migrants from the southern Africa region, with many moving from neighbouring Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe in search for work.

Police Minister Bheki Cele insisted recent violence was linked to “criminality” rather than “xenophobia”.

“(Xenophobia) is used as an excuse,” Cele told journalists after a tour of the CBD.

“For now there is nothing that has sparked any form of this conflict between the South Africans and foreign nationals.”

– ‘Enough is enough’ –

Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama reacted strongly to the scenes of violence.

“Received sickening and depressing news of continued burning and looting of Nigerian shops and premises in #SouthAfrica by mindless criminals with ineffective police protection,” he said on Twitter.

“Enough is enough. We will take definitive measures.”

Separately, police in the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) said at least 20 individuals had been arrested “in connection with incidents related to protests within the trucking industry”.

Taxi drivers clashed with police in Pretoria last week, and truckers started a nation-wide strike on Sunday to protest against the employment of foreign drivers.

Eleven trucks on Sunday blocked the road to Richards Bay Harbour, one of the deepest natural harbours in Africa, said KZN police. They told AFP at least four vehicles had been torched.

Lieutenant-General Khombinkosi Jula, police chief for KZN province, said they had intensified patrols along major routes.

In the Western Cape province, several protesters also blocked traffic by parking their vehicles on the road and offloading bags of sand.

“These incidents are due to a failing economy in which more than 10 million South Africans cannot find work,” said the Democratic Alliance (DA) opposition party in response to the violence.

Human Rights Watch last week reported that dozens of truck drivers in the country had died in attacks against foreigners since March 2018.

The report was released after a recent spate of xenophobic violence fuelled by economic decline and record unemployment.

A South African truck owners’ association quoted by the HRW reported 75 such incidents since March this year, 15 of which were independently confirmed by the watchdog.

– ‘Hungry and angry’ –

The latest population census in 2011 shows that numbers of migrants surged in the previous decade, with nearly half having moved to South Africa between 2005 and 2010. An unknown number of the migrants are undocumented.

Labour ministry spokesman Makhosonke Buthelezi last week told AFP that employers “prefer (foreign truck drivers) because they can work long hours at a much cheaper cost, so they tend to exploit them”.

Sipho Zungu, chairman of the All Truck Drivers Foundation told AFP his group had had “nothing to do with the strike”, but stressed that it was fighting for the employment of South African drivers.

“People of South Africa are hungry, they are sitting at home.. while companies in South Africa are employing foreigners …(because) its cheap labour. We are hungry and angry,” Zungu told AFP.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), which has over 200,000 members, also distanced itself from the violence.