Immigrant leaders in South Africa said on Monday that thousands of refugees frustrated at miserable living conditions were on the point of retaliating against a wave of xenophobic attacks.
"The tension is there, already, for a war," Deo Kabemba Bin Ngulu, a refugee leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo, told reporters.
Human rights groups have condemned the conditions in the tented refugee camps set up to house the displaced, with freezing temperatures at night and the threat of disease.
"They are terrorised, they are traumatised ... and some of them (can) resort to violence because they think, now, everywhere is violence," said Somali businessman Hoosein Omar.
Hundreds of mostly Somali traders marched to parliament in Cape Town on Monday to protest against the anti-immigrant attacks.
"We are African. We are from this soil. I am not a foreigner ... and this soil is Africa," Abdul Kadir Karakoos, a Somali leader in Cape Town, told reporters. (No it's not - this soil is the Republic of South Africa... how confused!)
The international medical humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, said facilities for displaced refugees were inadequate.
"After living in unacceptable conditions for up to three weeks, the people displaced are now being relocated by the South African government, without proper access to information about their rights and options, to sites that are unprepared and insecure," the group said in a statement.
"They say they are being treated like animals." (It doesn't say what kind of animals though?)
The violence, which has shattered South Africa's image as a welcoming home for asylum seekers, is being stoked by soaring food and fuel prices and competition for jobs and housing.
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