S Africa’s Zuma seeks to reassure foreigners as violence spreads

JOHANNESBURG // President Jacob Zuma pleaded with foreigners to stay in South Africa as he cancelled a state visit to Indonesia to deal with a wave of deadly xenophobic violence at home.

Three weeks of escalating anti-foreigner violence in South Africa have claimed at least six lives and forced more than 5,000 immigrants to seek refuge in makeshift camps.

The unrest, which began in the eastern port city of Durban before spreading to other parts of the country, carries echoes of the xenophobic riots that gripped South Africa in 2008 when 62 people were killed.

In the latest incident, police on Saturday said a foreigner died of stab wounds in Alexandra, a township north of Johannesburg.

Under pressure to avoid a repeat of the 2008 bloodshed, Mr Zuma travelled to Durban to visit a camp for foreigners displaced by the violence, but he faced a hostile reception from the crowd, which yelled “go home, go home” and “too late, too late”.

“As government, we’re not saying to you ‘go away’. It is not every South African who is saying ‘go away’. It is a very small number of people who say so,” Mr Zuma said at Chatsworth camp on Saturday, where he presented a cheque of 50,000 rand (Dh15,220) to help the victims of xenophobic victims.

He vowed to end the unrest and sought to assure the crowd there was a place for foreigners in South Africa. The South African leader had been scheduled to fly to Indonesia on Saturday, but he announced he was scrapping the trip.

* Agence France-Presse

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