Xenophobia In The eThekwini Metro

For the past few weeks we have witnessed senseless killings of foreign people by South Africans who were hell bent on achieving their criminal goals, masquerading them as xenophobia. A number of innocent lives were lost and hundreds of these foreigners lost their belongings in the process. Although these so-called xenophobic killings were of great proportions, we are glad that they did not spread throughout the country.

In our province it was just isolated incidents that occurred but sanity soon prevailed. It is a fact that people from KwaZulu-Natal are very accommodative to others. It was just a few criminal elements that wanted to taint the good image of our province.
 
The Police Service acted promptly and with authority. This is a job well done and they need to be commended. We are not so clear about the intentions of those who started these violent acts, except to say that we noticed a high level of criminal activities during that period. I am very pleased by the reaction of the African states whose citizens were attacked. They showed a great level of maturity and understood that these killings were motivated by criminality.

We are all aware of the mixed feelings which our people had before our national soccer team went to play in Nigeria. Some people were saying members of Bafana Bafana would be killed in Nigeria, but instead they were given a warm welcome.

This is what we expect other countries to do. The South African government is dealing with the issue and solutions to these problems will soon be found. Some of these foreigners have begun going back to the communities they were living in before they were attacked. As government, we would be failing in our duties if we do not condemn these senseless killings.

Xenophobia, in its all forms is totally unacceptable and our government will do all within its power to see to it that the same does not reoccur. Our plea to the local people is that they should give these people some space and if there are some of them who engage in criminal activities, let them report such people to the relevant authorities who will allow the law to take its course.