Locals run after trying to rob a foreign motorist in Johannesburg. South Africa has sought diplomatic support from countries across the continent to defeat the ‘demon’ of anti-immigrant violence in which at least four people have been killed over the past fortnight.

Reuters/Pretoria

South Africa sought diplomatic support from countries across the continent yesterday to defeat the “demon” of anti-immigrant violence in which at least four people have been killed over the past fortnight.
Foreign nationals have complained that the South African police are failing to protect them, raising the prospect of a row between Pretoria and its neighbours, as well as stirring hostility to South Africans working abroad.
The unrest, which began in the port town of Durban, has spread to Johannesburg where police fired rubber bullets and a stun grenade yesterday to end a stand-off between South Africans and an immigrant vigilante group armed with machetes.
“We believe that working together we can defeat this demon,” South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told reporters after meeting African diplomats in Pretoria. “We all have to nip this in the bud.”
However, the Malawian government has hired buses to repatriate 500 of its nationals, Information Minister Kondwani Nankhumwa said yesterday.
He urged South Africa to provide greater protection for immigrants, echoing demands from China and the African Union.
Kenya and some other African governments have also offered to evacuate any of their citizens who feel threatened, while local people in neighbouring Mozambique temporarily blocked a road leading to the South African frontier in protest.
Chadian Ambassador Mahamoud Adam Bachir told Reuters that the Pretoria meeting had helped to alleviate some safety concerns.
“It went better than expected. We were assured of the security of our nationals,” he said.
South Africa, with a population of about 50mn, is home to an estimated 5mn immigrants, from countries including Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Malawi, and from further afield, including China and Pakistan.
Many own shops or sell wares as informal hawkers on street corners or in markets.
Periodic outbreaks of anti-immigrant violence have been blamed on high unemployment, officially around 25% although economists say in reality much higher, widespread poverty and glaring income disparities.
Petrochemicals group Sasol said it would repatriate 340 South Africans working in Mozambique after local employees at one of its gas projects protested about their presence.
Separately, an industry source said Mozambican employees at a sub-contractor for mining group Vale had become “hostile” to South Africans working on the Moatize project in that country but there had been no violence.
The Ressano Garcia border post between South Africa and Mozambique was closed after around 200 Mozambicans barricaded a road approaching the crossing, police said.
Traffic later resumed after police dispersed the protesters.
The foreign ministry of China, a major trade partner of South Africa, said on Thursday that Chinese-run shops had been damaged in Johannesburg.
The Chinese consulate lodged a protest with the police and asked that they ensure the safety of Chinese people.
The latest wave of unrest began after Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini was quoted by local media as saying that foreigners should leave South Africa.
He has since said his comments were misinterpreted and has urged residents to be calm.
Johannesburg was the centre of anti-foreigner attacks in 2008 that killed more than 60 people.

African nations slam xenophobic violence

DPA/Cape Town

A group of African nations has criticised South Africa for not doing enough to stop violence against foreigners, after five people were killed in xenophobic attacks over the past two weeks.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) condemned “the barbaric, criminal and xenophobic murder of innocent African foreigners in South Africa”.
The South African government needs to act quickly to stop the increasing wave of attacks across the country, ECOWAS chair and Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama said.
“The very people whose nations sacrificed to help South Africans fight, repel and defeat apartheid, will today be considered aliens and hacked to death in such a barbaric manner,” Mahama said in a statement.
In Zimbabwe on Thursday, hundreds of people marched to the South African embassy in the capital, Harare, to protest the attacks, holding banners that read “Africa is for all Africans”.
A grouping of 31 civil society organisations handed a petition to South African deputy ambassador Andy Makwabe, demanding that South Africa “urgently ensure the full protection of all foreign nationals and their properties”.