The UN has set up camps for many of these African refugees who have been ethnically-purged from SA townships this month. Most are located near the more orderly and usually self-policed Afrikaner neighbourhoods such as this one at Olifantsfontein near Midrand. However at the Rosslyn refugee camp near the smallholdings of Pretoria, many of the tents occupied by Somali refugees were torched, forcing them to flee once again.
June 14 2008 - JOHANNESBURG. Today a Mozambiquan man was torched by 300 people in a squatter camp near Rustenburg, UNHCR tents housing Somali refugees were torched, and two Somali shop-workers were gunned down by three men shooting at them from outside the shop. One of the Somalis died, the other one is in hospital with four gunshot wounds to his upper body.
However the police now have invented a new slogan whenever another foreigner is murdered: 'it wasn't xenophobia, it was (fill in the blanks, usually either robbery or revenge attack...)
Meanwhile a United Nations situation report several weeks ago already highlighted severe weaknesses in the way SA authorities were dealing with these xenophobic crimes - noting that 'foreigners continued to be intimidated, threatened and harassed in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal while violence continued in the Western Cape...'
- The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has donated some 2,000 tents - with a capacity to house 10,000 people - to the SA National Disaster Management Centre and contracted a site-planner.
The agency said 42,000 people -- of the 100,000 displaced were being accommodated in 95 makeshift shelters mostly in Gauteng and the Western Cape. "Temporary accommodation is needed immediately," the agency said.
600 SOMALI TRADERS MURDERED since 2002:
"We are African. We are from this soil. I am not a foreigner ... and this soil is Africa," Abdul Kadir Karakoos, a Somali community-leader in Cape Town, told reporters.
He said 600 Somalis had already been killed in anti-immigrant violence in South Africa since 2002.
600 Somalis killed in SA since 2002:
"We are African. We are from this soil. I am not a foreigner ... and this soil is Africa," Abdul Kadir Karakoos, a Somali community-leader in Cape Town, told reporters.
He said 600 Somalis had been killed in anti-immigrant violence in South Africa since 2002.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees had officially lodged a formal complaint to the SA government about these often very cruel xenophobic murders of Somali traders in 2007.
BBC coverage of SA ethnic-cleansing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7407055.stm
CNN: Necklacing back in SA townships: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/05/22/southafrica.riots/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
