Fires leave 75 people homeless

Seventy-five residents of Masiphumelele were left homeless at the weekend after a fire swept through the Kommetjie informal settlement destroying their shacks.

Police are investigating the cause of the fire, which broke out on Saturday.

Also at the weekend, five Sea Point tenants were injured in a blaze in their flat.

In a third incident, police were investigating whether a fire in a building along Voortrekker Road in Parow was started intentionally on Sunday.

Firefighters had rushed to the scene and extinguished the blaze before it spread from a room.

On Sunday, Theo Layne, a station officer at the Cape Town Fire Command and Control Centre, said firefighters had received a report about the Voortrekker Road building which was on fire.

He said arson was suspected and it appeared the fire had been intentionally started in a room which was destroyed by the flames. "The police also came to the scene to start investigating," he said.

An officer at the Parow police station confirmed arson was suspected, but did not have further details.

Layne was not sure for what purpose the room, in a building occupied by a number of businesses, had been used.

No one was injured.

Shortly before midnight though, five Sea Point residents suffered burn wounds when a blaze started in a flat.

Layne said firefighters had rushed out to Shoreham Building in Beach Road where a first-floor flat was burning in the eight-storey building.

Firefighters managed to extinguish the flames before they spread to other flats.

Layne said five people had been injured, one suffering second degree burns, and were taken to hospital.

He said police had also arranged for them to receive trauma counselling.

While other tenants had managed to evacuate the building, Layne said four people had been stuck on the fourth floor while the fire had been raging.

But firefighters managed to get them out uninjured.

Layne said the cause of the fire in the block of flats was being investigated. - Cape Times

20 000 Cape foreigners displaced

Aid organisations, church groups and the government have sought to provide relief for the almost 20,000 people thought to have been displaced by violence against African expatriates in Cape Town, with the Simon's Town naval base being opened late on Sunday night to accommodate 600 people.

No deaths were reported, while the SA Police Service and Metro Police were maintaining a strong presence at several places where tensions were high.

The provincial government said it had deployed all police personnel, extended their working hours, called up reservists and Bambanani volunteers, and assigned 15 medical teams to provide as much help as possible to people displaced by the violence.

After four days of looting, burning of shacks and widespread intimidation and violence across the city, Mayor Helen Zille called on the United Nations and the international community to help solve a "much larger-scale problem than we anticipated".

Premier Ebrahim Rasool told a group of displaced African expatriates given accommodation at Soetwater holiday camp that a representative from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would meet them to discuss their plight.

The group had demanded to see the representative, accusing Rasool and his government of not having done enough to avert the attacks. They said the attacks appeared well planned as they had been discussed in taxis and at some taxi ranks.

"Xenophobia was progressing from other parts of the country," Mwamba Kazadi, a representative of the Congolese staying at the camp, told Rasool.

"You did not do anything to stop it from happening here. We do not want to talk to your government. We want to talk to the UNHCR."

Rasool said he would not allow them to return to the communities unless it was safe to do so.

In a joint statement, churches of different denominations called on President Thabo Mbeki to "rapidly increase the pace of service delivery" to stem the poor's frustration, which they said had led to the backlash against expatriates.

Zille warned of "a growing backlash by South African citizens", with "serious tension" between communities and people accommodated in safe centres and temporary shelters, such as the Summer Greens hall near Milnerton.

Many refugees have refused to move to the city's six "safe sites".

More than 8 000 have sought shelter at the sites, set up by the city with welfare agencies, and provided with law enforcement, ablution facilities and food relief. Just over 1,000 people have been taken in by churches and mosques.

Others spent the weekend in community halls, sports facilities and churches. Almost 500 people have spent the past three nights camping on the street outside the Cape Town Central police station.

Zille urged displaced people to move to the safe sites so they could be registered and reintegrated into communities or advised how they could return home. Also, the situation would be easier to manage than if people were dispersed across the city.

"Some people are refusing to move and inciting others."

Zille said the city was seeking legal advice and would consider "other options" if people refused to move from temporary facilities.

Tension was especially high in Summer Greens, where hundreds of people refused to move to a safer site.

They also became angry when they realised the use-by dates of some vacuum-packed meats offered to them had expired, and began throwing the "poisonous" food around.

"Look what they've given us - it's old food," they shouted, throwing crates of sandwiches off tables.

Zille was called in and found the floor strewn with meat and bread.

"I'm very sorry for what has happened," she told the crowd.

"This is an emergency shelter and you must understand that that's fair. I have Silverstream (near Milnerton) ready for you. The buses are here. Please take the buses and go to Silverstream.

"We are protecting you. I'm sorry (the food) has passed its sell-by date. It didn't come from the municipality. It must have come from another source," Zille shouted, struggling to be heard over the noisy crowd.

More police officers had to be called to keep the surging crowd from pushing into Zille.

As she walked out under heavy police guard, the foreigners shouted: "Let her go. She didn't bring us solutions."

A number of them waved packs of the expired meat in front of Zille as she made her way out. A number of times, Zille stopped to speak to the shouting foreigners, most of them from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

They said they wanted to return to the informal settlements they had come from, but were afraid to go back.

They did not want to go to Silverstream.

"My four children go to school near here and I work here," said one, Maskinni Assumani. "We can't just go to that Silverstream place."

Another, Pascal Lonatio, shouted: "We won't leave here. They can rather kill us here... we won't leave."

A number of police vans and officers monitored the hall throughout the night. They said they would try to get the refugees on the bus for Silverstream today.

Zille asked Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota to open the naval base and military bases to provide more safe sites.

By late on Sunday afternoon, the Youngsfield Military Base in Ottery was filled to capacity with 700 people.

In Du Noon, people walked past shops that had been looted and stepped over goods stripped from shelves and scattered in the streets.

Communities across the city rallied to help deal with the crisis.

In Khayelitisha, a crisis management committee of councillors, community representatives and South African National Civic Organisation members was set up.

Councillor Masizole Mnqasela (DA) said there were about 2 700 displaced people in Khayelitsha, with 720 being accommodated in the Desmond Tutu Hall, 550 in the Mahlangu Hall, 650 in the Site B Hall and about 100 in the Resource Centre.

Crisis committee member Bonginkosi Madikizela said there had been no serious attacks in Khayelitsha, only opportunistic crimes.

There was no quick-fix solution. "We need to look at a long-term border control strategy."

At an emergency press conference, called by the Consultation of Christian Churches Church Leaders' Action Group in Cape Town yesterday afternoon, Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba read the joint statement in English and pastor AJ Jantjies the Afrikaans version.

The church leaders said they were "appalled at the violence" and "shamed by the despicable treatment of men, women and children, and theft and vandalising of property".

"The tragic situation serves as a timely and ominous warning of the growing frustration of the poor."

The church leaders offered to mediate between "estranged communities", and appealed to all people not to initiate or react to violence. - Cape Times

Ethnic cleansing: SA Style

It was as if the apartheid era had returned in South Africa. To a world largely unaware of the growing tensions between the country's poorest and the migrants who have streamed in from the rest of Africa, the sight of soldiers on township streets, policemen using shotguns for crowd control, and, above all, the sickening spectacle of "necklacing" came as a shock.

What passions could arouse a mob to place a petrol-soaked tyre around a man's body, pinning his arms to his side, and burn him to death? Under white rule it was the brutal punishment for township informers; now it is the struggle for survival under an ANC government that many accuse of having become remote and ineffectual.

According to critics, President Thabo Mbeki and his ministers have been more interested in winning the approval of international financial institutions than in focusing on the widening gap between rich and poor, and the competition at the bottom between locals and foreigners. Significantly, the trouble first erupted on 11 May in dilapidated Alexandra township, north-east of Johannesburg's city centre and right alongside Sandton, one of the richest areas in South Africa.

Nowhere else in the country is the legacy of apartheid so visible: while a sprinkling of wealthy black entrepreneurs and administrators have made the jump to Sandton, it is still predominantly white. The population of "Alex", as everyone calls it, remains entirely black. But in the township's narrow, dusty streets, South Africans have been joined by people from all over the continent – mainly Zimbabweans fleeing economic chaos under Robert Mugabe and Mozambicans to whom even Alex looks prosperous, but also Nigerians, Somalis and Congolese.

By definition, those prepared to leave their own country in search of a better life are often more enterprising than those who have never stirred from home, and many of the shops and stalls in Alex and other poor areas were run by foreigners, arousing envy. With unemployment having grown by 12 per cent last year to nearly four million jobless – 23 per cent of the workforce – South Africans believed migrants were taking their jobs. They were also easy scapegoats for the country's appalling crime rate.

From Alex two weeks ago, violence against foreigners, usually by crowds going from house to house at night, spread rapidly to Diepsloot, one of the vast squatter camps on the edge of Johannesburg. When the police intervened, the attacks shifted to smaller squatter camps east of the city. It was here that the dreadful "necklacing" death of one victim was photographed.

By yesterday there had been outbreaks in Northwest province, Durban and Cape Town. But by far the worst of the violence was in Gauteng province, around Johannesburg. Forty-three people have died and about 23,000 foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, have been forced by armed gangs to flee their homes with nothing but their lives. The Mozambican government declared a state of emergency to help its citizens, and by yesterday more than 15,000 had gone home, some in chartered buses, many others on their own.

Jose Abilio arrived with nothing to show for his five years in South Africa but two shirts in a plastic bag. "I left everything when the mobs came to attack our home in Alexandra, and since then I have been living at a police station," he said.

In grimly misnamed Primrose, a drab inner suburb of Germiston, east of Johannesburg, a refugee camp had sprung up on waste ground between the local police station and the Primrose Methodist church. About 2,000 Mozambicans and Zimbabweans who fled last Sunday from a pogrom in the local squatter camp, less than a mile away, were crammed into plastic tents. They were fed by charities, but in the freezing Highveld winter, with too few portable toilets, the scene was miserable and squalid. People tried to sleep under piles of blankets, or stood around fires they made by pulling branches off the nearby trees.

While some of the Alex victims said the attacks were perpetrated by "Zulus" from a nearby hostel, those at the Primrose camp said their attackers were some of their closest neighbours. They came at night and told the migrants to go back where they came from, there and then, or die. These neighbours then stole their meagre possessions and demolished their shacks.

"You know that so many people have been beaten to death and one of them necklaced," said Solomon Chibebe , a Mozambican who had made his own neat, small tent with blankets on the side of the waste ground for himself, his wife, Anita, and young daughter, Constance. "So when they came to my house and told me to go ... I went."

"It is the Zulus, it is the Zulus," shouted another man, a Zimbabwean. "No, no, that is rubbish," said his compatriot, Henry Dziva . "If you want to blame someone, it's the newspapers, especially the tabloids. They always write, 'Foreigners raped this one, foreigners raped that one, foreigners are the criminals'."

There have been numerous stories in the newspapers about Zimbabwean criminal gangs and Nigerian drug lords. Foreigners are perceived to have, and perhaps indeed have, jumped the housing lists by paying bribes to move into so-called RDP (reconstruction and development programme) houses – built by the government, with electricity and sanitation – before locals. Township dwellers, squatter-camp inhabitants and rural people have been short-changed by the civil service. "Years of corruption within the civil service have resulted in it becoming the breeding ground of what Nelson Mandela once called the scoundrels who prey on the public purse," wrote Jabulani Sikhakhane of Business Report last week.

But what the wave of violence has shown most clearly is that South Africa's isolation from the rest of the continent has not disappeared with the end of apartheid. Never did Mr Mbeki seem so out of tune with the public mood than when when he spoke out on the violence last week. His condemnation of "these shameful and criminal acts" was to be expected, but his finger-wagging admonition to South Africans that "citizens from other countries on the African continent and beyond are as human as we are, and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity" cut little ice.

More representative was the black police constable guarding the Primrose camp. "There are just too many of these people here, you know, and something was going to happen to them," he shrugged, before going off on patrol. The marauders have been very careful to confine themselves to attacking foreigners and their "property" only, and South Africans have largely been indifferent.

Only 50 yards from the camp is a brightly lit petrol station with a Steers fast food restaurant. "Ja, I watched them hacking people with pangas [machetes] just across the road," said the white manager. "But they didn't come here, so we just carried on. Who knows, some of the killers might have come across here for a hamburger in the middle of things, I don't know."

ANC leaders who spent years in exile feel a debt of gratitude to the African countries that sheltered them, as Mr Mbeki's statement shows. It also helps to explain his failure to act against Mr Mugabe's misrule in Zimbabwe, with results that have come to haunt him at home. There are said to be as many as three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, and they are not as willing as the Mozambicans to return home.

When questions about the growing influx were raised at the end of last year, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Minister of Home Affairs, said the government refused to recognise them as refugees. That would have contradicted the official stance that there was nothing wrong in Zimbabwe, but the minister assured questioners that "contingency arrangements were in place" if there was a humanitarian crisis. Instead, its incompetence has been exposed, and its response to the violence has been to blame a mysterious "third force".

Essop Pahad, the Minister in the Presidency, said right-wingers had always targeted what he called the "lumpenproletariat" with xenophobic propaganda. The fact that pamphlets were printed, warning foreigners to leave the country, was taken as evidence that the attacks were organised rather than spontaneous, accompanied by rumours that Zulu-based groups were behind the violence.

Others, such as Steven Friedman of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, countered that the government had simply been ignoring for years the powder keg of resentment that has been waiting to be ignited – and that may have been set off by, among other things, the farce of the recent Zimbabwean presidential elections and Mr Mbeki's obvious powerlessness.

Whatever the cause, to some extent the perpetrators have succeeded in doing in 14 days what the South African government has not been able to do in 14 years – "dealing with" the human flood that has swept into the country since the end of apartheid. But their methods raise another spectre from the last century, which first gained a name not in Africa but the Balkans: that of ethnic cleansing.

- Independent.co.uk

Thank you All & you too Mr President

A ship carrying arms that eventually did get to Zimbabwe - puttered through the entire length of our South African coast to dock on the other side of the continent to deliver its cargo -

Thank you all and each and every one who had a hand in buying us these:

is that 15... in the picture and of course the 3 floating steel turds the Queen Modjadji and her seabitches.

None of this stopped the tug boat delivering arms; now Zimbabwe is a problem inside our boarders and not one of these -

YES that is NOT ONE

can help with the National Security problem Zimbabwe/Mozambique/Congo/Angola/Somalia has become on our land mass, fuck the coast line - the ship got through.

You can't deploy a corvette or a submarine to resolve Xenophobia... even if it wasn't just docked like floating there.

When money is spent to float - and delivery equates to the most expensive per square meter cost - as shown in the national Flagship the N2 Gateway...

EVERYONE should question - how government money is spent.

This is failure on all counts; perceived national security; perceived African unity; a perceived home for all; it's not like our abalone are any safer, or that South Africans saw any value to this.

Some seashell may - but no-one else...

Fuck you all very much that went toy boat shopping with our money!

Look at what you've bought!

Thousands displaced in Cape Town

More than 10,000 foreigners have been displaced in the Cape Town area after xenophobic violence led them to leave their homes, Cape Town Disaster Management said on Saturday.

Spokesperson Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said Disaster Management had accommodated about 10, 000 people since Thursday, but hundreds more were seeking shelter at police stations.

"We are providing food, blankets, mattresses and tents," Solomons-Johannes said.

Police reported that 200 people had been arrested on Friday night and Saturday morning throughout the Western Cape in connection with the attacks.

'We are providing food, blankets, mattresses and tents'

Superintendent Andre Traut said shops had been looted and foreigners were being evacuated from townships throughout the province.

Solomons-Johannes said buses were ready to evacuate people from the Cape Town central business district should the need arise.

Police nor Disaster Management knew of any major injuries or deaths.

Meanwhile, Gauteng police reported that townships surrounding Johannesburg had quietened down after two weeks of xenophobic violence in which at least 43 people lost their lives.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR on Friday estimated the number of displaced in South Africa at 17 000, adding that "a very large percentage" of these were Zimbabweans.

Official Mozambican media on Saturday reported that 15,000 Mozambicans living in South Africa had returned to their home country.

Cape Town foreigners were also contemplating going back to their countries of birth and Disaster Management was discussing with Home Affairs about assisting them do to do so.

However, any decisions on long-term solutions for the immigrants lay with Home Affairs, Solomon-Johannes said.

Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on May 15, four days after the first xenophobic mass-attacks in Alexandra, said a plan was in place to return all displaced people, foreign and South African, to their houses before the end of that week. - Sapa

Ocean View blocks refugee settlement

About 200 shouting people from Ocean View on Friday won a fight to keep foreigners out of their community.

An ugly battle was waged between a city councillor and locals who threatened to burn down a community hall if foreigners were given refuge.

Provisions and supplies had been taken to the Ocean View community hall for foreigners displaced by Thursday night's violence in Masiphumelele.

But dancing, laughing, jeering and shouting local residents defied councillor Nikki Holderness, who tried to reason with them, and refused to leave the hall.

'Put them where you live. Put them in the white neighbourhood'

The shouting, often accentuated by whiffs of alcohol, was mostly unintelligible, but the message was clear - that the destitute were unwelcome.

"We don't want them here, not even for half an hour," one resident shouted while police officers kept a close eye on developments.

"We only need the place for two days," the embattled Holderness pleaded.

But, as the situation worsened, the decision was made to withdraw and begin the search for an alternative shelter for the refugees - many of whom had lost all their possessions the previous night.

"They must move immediately," one grinning man shouted.

"I don't think this is going to stop," a police officer said.

The crowd cheered and jeered as a small group of refugees sheepishly left the place where earlier they had thought they could rest in safety.

Eyeing the provisions provided by the city's department of disaster management, a woman in pyjamas joked: "Dis onse spaza (It's our shop)," while another shouted: "We will take the food."

Later, all the foodstuffs, blankets and other items that had been stacked along the walls were reloaded into the back of a truck, to more cheering from the crowd.

"Eendrag maak mag!" (Unity is strength) shouted a youngster, as consenting voices agreed to move on to the next place authorities had identified as a refugee shelter.

"We'll go take them out at the Civic Centre, too," another promised.

"Brand die goed!" (Burn the stuff)", added a teenager on his bicycle.

Asked why they did not want the refugees sheltering in their neighbourhood, one man said: "Put them where you live. Put them in the white neighbourhood."

A woman said: "When my brother's house was burnt down, nobody helped him. And, also, our kids can't walk freely in the neighbourhood, because we don't know them. They will rape our children."

At lunchtime on Friday, refugees who had been outside the police station earlier in the morning before leaving for places of shelter, had once again returned.

Chairperson of the city's safety and security portfolio committee JP Smith spoke out on Friday about the violence that has ripped the city apart and left thousands hopeless and homeless.

"It is impossible that it is a spontaneous uprising," Smith said, commenting on the seemingly orchestrated "organised pockets" of violence that broke out simultaneously across the peninsula and further afield.

"It is a vicious criminality. It is racism. Xenophobia is a deceitful euphemism." - Cape Argus

Newborn Xeno to be a lasting reminder

Xeno Sakala is just two days old, but he has already been catapulted into a legend. His birth will be a lasting reminder of Zimbabwean people's suffering at the hands of South Africans.

His proud mother, Diana Sakala, 30, hopes that through Xeno, born on Wednesday, the memory of last weekend, when a marauding mob bayed for foreigners' blood in Ekurhuleni, will remain etched in her mind.

"I called him Xeno because of these xenophobic crimes. When he grows up, I don't want him to be like these people who rob, rape and kill others under the pretext of xenophobia," said Sakala, speaking from a storeroom where she and other displaced foreigners are being accommodated.

"It's like my world has fallen apart in a few minutes. They burnt our shacks, looted everything we had, including clothes for this baby," she said, flanked by her husband, Clement.

"I don't think all South Africans are bad," she said, out of gratitude for the police and nurses who helped her.

Sakala, who came to South Africa from Harare four years ago, said she was not sure whether she wanted to return to Zimbabwe.

Her husband said: "Here, you can work and be beaten or get killed, but once we cross that river, we can't get work but can still be beaten or killed. It's like we are caught in crossfire." - Cape Argus

South African Immigrant Attacks Spread to Cape Town

South African anti-immigrant attacks, which claimed at least 42 lives since May 11, spread to Cape Town and North West province, forcing foreigners to seek shelter at police stations and sports grounds.

Attacks on immigrants were reported in 10 areas around Cape Town today, including the sprawling townships of Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain, said Jeremy Michaels, spokesman for Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool. The provincial government isn't considering calling for troops to help the police, he added.

While Zimbabweans, driven south by a decade of political violence and economic recession in their homeland, bear the brunt of attacks, smaller South African ethnic groups are also being targeted. Some shanty-town residents see Zimbabwean immigrants, numbering about 3 million, and other Africans in the country as rivals for jobs and housing.

``There is no doubt that overcrowding and poverty has a hand to play in how people will react when they feel hard done by,'' Gwede Mantashe, general-secretary of the ruling African National Congress, said in the party's online newsletter today. ``There is no room for this behavior in our country.''

South Africa, with a population of 48.5 million, has a shortfall of 2.4 million houses and one in four South Africans doesn't have a job.

Xenophobic violence in Johannesburg has forced at least 20,000 people, including Mozambicans and Somalis, to seek refuge at police stations and community halls, while more than 400 people have been arrested. The attacks started in the city's northern township of Alexandra on May 11.

`It's War'

``It's war I tell you; it's South Africa versus Maputo,'' Wandile Langa, a 20-year-old South African, told the Mail & Guardian, referring to the capital of Mozambique. Langa told the Johannesburg-based newspaper that he roams the streets of the Ramaphosa shanty town, southeast of South Africa's biggest city, trying to identify foreigners.

``We just ask them Zulu words that any South African knows,'' Langa said. ``If they get it wrong, we hit them.''

Foreign-owned shops were looted at Du Noon shanty town in Cape Town and several people injured after locals threw stones and bottles, Western Cape police spokesman Billy Jones said by phone from the city today. More than 400 foreigners are seeking refuge at Killarney horse racing track.

In North West three people were stabbed as mobs looted shops and burned cars in sporadic incidents in shanty towns across the province, Superintendent Lesego Metsi said by phone from Potchefstroom.

Stabbings

One of two Pakistanis stabbed in the Kokosi township, near the mining town of Fochville, last night is still in hospital while a shop belonging to a Mozambican was razed, Metsi said. At least 31 Mozambicans and 34 Somalis were given shelter at a sports stadium and four arrests were made, he added.

At Mothutlung township near Brits, more than 200 South Africans looted shops owned by Mozambicans and Somalis, while in nearby Lethlabile, 12 shops owned by Zimbabweans were ransacked, Metsi said. Thirty foreigners are seeking refuge at a police station in Brits and 15 people were arrested.

``There are a lot of incidents that flare up sporadically,'' Metsi said. ``We are stretching our resources.''

In Ipelegeng settlement near Schweizer Reneke, four people were arrested for stabbing someone in the head and spraying a South African with pepper spray because she worked for a person from Bangladesh, Metsi said.

Troops Deployed

A battalion of 850 to 900 soldiers is on standby to help police if called upon, General Kwena Mangope said in an interview from Pretoria today.

Violence in Johannesburg eased after the army was deployed at George Goch in the south of the city, police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said in an interview today. A shack was burnt down in Primrose, east of the city, while a shop belonging to Zimbabweans in Germiston, also in the east, was looted.

Police in Mpumalanga, east of Johannesburg, are stepping up patrols in townships across the province this weekend after arresting 62 people aged between 17 and 26 for attacks on foreigners this week, said Superintendent Sibongile Nkosi.

In Limpopo, which borders Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana, 11 people will be charged for attempted murder, armed robbery and malicious damage to property for attacking homes rented by foreigners and stabbing a Mozambican in Mohlalaetsi, Superintendent Ronel Otto said.

Shelter is being provided to 34 people from Zimbabwe, 24 Ethiopia and 23 from Mozambique at a police station in the area, Otto said.

In South Africa's third-biggest city Durban, five foreigners were beaten, the South African Press Association reported.

The Mozambican government is working with South African officials to help citizens who want to return home and find solutions to end the attacks, President Armando Guebuza told reporters in the northern province of Cabo Delgago yesterday.

South Africa's Vice President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka apologized to victims of the violence when she visited the Nigerian capital, Abuja, today.

``The acts over the last few weeks are nothing else but criminal and we will not allow them to destabilize the country and our relations with the citizens of all other countries,'' Mlambo-Ngcuka said. ``I want to apologize to those who have been affected.''

- Bloomberg

Attacks spread in Cape Town

Cape Town - Looting, violence and tension towards foreigners were spreading throughout the Western Cape on Friday, according to police.

"We've had reports at Milnerton, Khayelitsha, Strand and Nyanga," said Superintendent Andre Traut.

He stressed that no lives had been threatened at this stage. "It's just the criminal element looting the foreigners."

Somali community spokesperson, Mohamed Jana said that he was waiting along with 500 other Somalis on the main road in Bellville. "They are homeless and bankrupt," he said. "We are waiting for a response from the City."

They had fled from Strand - which has a community of about 250 Somalis, Bellville and other areas. Their shops had been looted and their money taken, according to Jana.

The City of Cape Town disaster risk management was taking people to community halls on Friday.

Traut said the situation was volatile and warned of "the possible eruption of violence". He confirmed that police had been deployed to various hot spots all over the Western Cape.

About 500 foreigners were taken to Killarney Racetrack on Thursday night after an outbreak of violence in Du Noon, near Milnerton. Six people were injured. - NEWS24

X is all over the spot - Cops spread thin

E-tv reports shops being looted and refugees being evicted violently in Nomzamo - Strand

NY6 in Gugs is about to explode - and the president is out of town - perhaps now that military can be used and the new guns just arrived yesterday that the Deputy President help organise now they can call in the BIG GUNS.

Queen Modjadji and her floating submariners - just the ordinance needed for this African Renaissances... civil unrest, peace keeping effort - law enforcement...

Can any Zimbabweans assist with the submariner shortage? Mozambiqueans? Angolans? Congolese?

Just asking...

Xenophobia spreads to Western Cape

Somali shops were looted and some stoned by youths shouting that they must go back home

Somalian shop-owners who live in Dunoon near Milnerton in Cape Town have been evacuated by police and metro police as xenophobic attacks spread to Cape Town last night. Somali shops were looted and some stoned by youths shouting that they must go back home.

Residents say a community meeting apparently called by the police to discuss peaceful co-existence with the immigrants failed to materialise as toyi-toying youths caused disruptions.

ANC Parliamentarians were in Dunoon the day before to announce a meeting that will strengthen existing peace between the locals and foreign nationals. It never took place. Instead marauding youths started gathering towards Somali owned shops. Police were called in.

Living peacefully together for years
Most if not all the shops in the area are owned by foreigners of Somali origin. Other locals says they have been living peacefully with the foreign nationals for years, blaming whoever called the community meeting last night.

Late last night the Somalis and a few from other countries were assembled on the other side of the road just outside the township, not sure where they would go. Locals stood watching them across the road not extending any invitation from the other side of the road. A man from Angola says they don't feel welcome any more.

Police spokesperson Billy Jones says there were a number of arrests for looting and damage to property but could not confirm the numbers. The city council has agreed to open a community centre where the group will be temporarily accommodated. Meanwhile reports came in last night that foreign nationals at Masiphumelele informal settlement in Hout Bay were being evacuated.

Meanwhile, political and social commentators have suggested that government should consider introducing xenophobic-related subjects at primary and secondary school levels to raise awareness among the youth. Recent reports pointed to the fact that young people had been involved in the recent spate of xenophobic-related attacks. - SABC

Foreigners in Knysna seek refuge

More than 100 people from other parts of Africa living in an informal settlement in Knysna sought refuge at the town's police station on Thursday night after five Somali-owned spaza shops were looted.

Although none of the foreigners living in Witlokasie had been attacked or received threats, they felt at risk, police spokesperson Malcolm Pojie said.

Police and council officials met them last night to try to ease their fears.

They were given accommodation in a community hall.

Police reinforcements were sent to Witlokasie and neighbouring police stations placed on standby.

Earlier on Thursday, after the first spaza shop was looted, a handful of Somalis gathered at the Knysna police station.

Hours later the number had grown to about 120 and included people from countries other than Somalia, Pojie said.

"We're just trying to calm the situation now. We're also urging the community please not to continue with such actions."

A Somali-owned shop had been looted about 11.40am and one of two shopkeepers slightly injured in a scuffle, Pojie said.

It was not clear who had looted the shop or whether a mob was responsible. By nightfall, five Somali shops had been looted.

Pojie believed a number of others might have been plundered, without being reported.

Foreigners in the area had begun making their way to the police station.

When their numbers increased, they were told the hall would be available to them.

"Some of the (shopkeepers) emptied their shops and took all their goods with them. I'm not sure if more will arrive, but it seems these are most of Witlokasie's (foreigners)." - Cape Times

Du Noon breaks out into Xenophobic rioting and looting

Etv's 10pm News Reporter Jody Jacobs reports from Du Noon of foreigners shops being looted and set alight. Police are shooting rubber bullets and using stun grenades to disperse the angry crowds.

He reported that the police were escorting foreigners out of the area too safety. While police helicopters offered sky ordinance support.

Hemp catching on with farmers

Hemp can be used to make building blocks, plaster or insulation Forget potatoes, wheat or barley... hemp is the newest crop gracing the fields of the north west. About a dozen farmers in County Londonderry have started to grow the plant - a variety of cannabis - for its non-intoxicating uses. The material is primarily used in the building industry, but can be found in everything from pharmaceuticals to food. Robert Moore grows 300 acres of hemp at his farm at Ballougry outside Derry. "I'm licensed from the department of health and from the police, and before anybody starts coming up to pinch some, you could smoke it from now to Christmas and it wouldn't give you any sort of charge. "There is no drug value in it all," he said. Mr Moore said that hemp as a crop has "huge potential". You could smoke it from now to Christmas and it wouldn't give you any sort of charge Robert Moore "You can use the fibre as roof insulation or wall insulation, and it's a very environmentally-friendly product. "I think there are over 2,000 different uses - I even saw hemp oil when I was at the Balmoral Show last week." Marcus McCabe is from Hempire Building Materials in Limavady. His company has spent the last few years experimenting with ways of processing hemp, including mixing it with lime to create plaster. "We certainly have enough hemp to plaster 4,000 houses between now and next year. "When we need is to get architects involved, councils involved, even individuals involved." "Anybody who is building, we need them to think about these sustainable materials," he said. Derry farmer John Gilliland specialises in sustainable crops. He said hemp is a great crop for the environment. "It locks up the carbon dioxide in the hemp itself, so it's a very useful tool to both provide a fibre and help the environment." Robert Moore is convinced the crop has huge potential. "I would love to see 3,000 acres of it rather than 300, because it works for us and it has the environmentally-friendly aspect as well," he said. - BBC