Schwartzerwitz: Heavy police presence amid xenophobic clashes

Monday, July 19, 2010

Heavy police presence amid xenophobic clashes

Xenophobic clashes broke out in Kya Sands late on Monday night and during the early hours of Tuesday morning as police have moved in and are maintaining a heavy, watchful presence.

"We don't have all the details yet, and I can only confirm that there definitely were some attacks.

"We're still sketchy on exactly how many and we're busy investigating the motives," said Brigadier Govindsamy Mariemuthoo, police spokesman for the province.

"This kind of thing starts up late at night and then quietens down. It seems everything is calm but tense in the area this morning."

Clashes broke out in the informal settlement at about 10.45pm on Monday, possibly sparked by a robbery deep inside the settlement in northern Johannesburg.

At least five people were wounded on Monday night - four of them foreigners and one a South African whose screams that he was not a foreigner were not heeded by the mob who attacked him and left him with a massive gash on the back of his head.

Eyewitness News reporter Alex Eliseev said running battles took place throughout the night until calm eventually prevailed from about 1am.

He said a heavy police presence, a patrolling nyala and an overhead helicopter did much to ensure that there were no more violent outbreaks.

Two injured men were pulled out of the area by paramedics after they sustained deep cuts to their heads. One of them described having been attacked with an axe.

A woman and her partner tried to outrun an angry mob of about 20 South Africans. She fell and was kicked as she lay on the ground before being wrapped in a blanket and carried to safety by her partner. She was taken to hospital for treatment.

The South African man who was injured told how an angry mob had asked him where he was from and then attacked him before he could respond. He was also taken to hospital with a deep head wound.

Mariemuthoo has maintained the consistent police line that the attacks were not necessarily motivated by xenophobia and that a criminal motive was also under investigation.

Local residents were said to be jealous of the success of informal businesses established by foreigners and were believed to be behind much of the looting that had taken place. - IOL

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Every Pogrom needs an Armband....

Welcome to Schwartzerwitz. The inevitable consequence of 4 million illegal immigrants arriving in South Africa. More desperate than our local folk they are willing to work longer harder faster for less. The immigrants are more reliable than South African unskilled labour and have outcompeted the local folk. No matter what anyone says it's not FAIR on our locals. Adding 4 million hungry mouths to the country has exacerbated the rocketing food prices felt across the globe. Adding 4 million potential electricity users to the mix has undoubtedly worsened the electricity situation. Having 4 million people send home money to their family drains the economy of money which should stay within the borders. Adding 4 million people and not registering them as taxpayers has cost the country billions. What chance does our government of ridding the country of shacks as per the Millennium Development Goal when 4 million immigrants build/rent shacks. Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe....? Just move to a shack in South Africa. On an individual basis this site condemns violent acts against individuals. However as a collective the illegal immigrants deserve no sympathy and should be deported back from whence they came. These people are economic refugees - "not real refugees" - and they are(generally speaking) in South Africa illegally.

kwerekwere.

The inside cover of my Oxford English dictionary features a word with which I have become all too familiar: the word is kwerekwere.

(It may be more familiar to you with one of its vernacular language–dependant prefixes prepended — the Sotho singular being le– and plural ma–, the Nguni singular being i– and plural ama–). This word is used to refer to black (in the morphological sense) Africans who are not South Africans — South African being defined as Sotho, Nguni, Venda and Tsonga ethnic groups (by that measure the Swazis, Batswana, etc. would be South African?). This word has a very negative sting to it and is often used with contempt. From what I gather it has undertones which speak of how black Africans are believed to be sub–human, too dark and have a pungent smell.