The Saga Continues ...

Reports indicate that the xenophobic attacks appear to be abating, although there are still outbursts in some areas. The death toll is reported to be 42. Estimates of the number of people displaced vary from about 16,000 to about 20,000.

Two of the quotes reported in today's Mail & Guardian, by people in Alexandra, speak volumes about what we can expect in the future:

'Alexandra resident Resident Florah Khwerana said: "People are tired, this is not going to stop now."

She said the government and dignitaries who visited the township in the wake of the violence and condemned the violence were making the situation worse.

"They are living the good life ... they don't know how we live. It's like the government is against its own people and this is making us more angry," she said.

Khwerana said residents were very angry.

"How can everyone provide food at the police station for them and here there are our own people hungry. They don't provide for their own." '

And ...

'A man identified himself as "Zest" said the idea that foreigners took jobs belonging to South Africans was "ridiculous".

"I don't agree. South Africans are hopeless in that way ... when they [foreigners] are gone, who are they going to blame for not having jobs?" he said.

He said there were too many foreigners, but this was the government's fault.

"Why couldn't South Africa build refugee camps? Instead they're here," he said.

"There is too many of them, they have turned the [Johannesburg] CBD into a refugee camp. You walk around and you don't even hear one of the languages you speak." ' - Mail & Guardian, 23rd May, 2008.


Whether the number of foreigners in the country has a significant impact on the general state of poverty or not, they are not the initial cause of the poverty. The people are angry and the proverbial pot has boiled over. All the talking in the world by Government will not rescue the situation. Those talking are seen to be the wealthy, who do not have to suffer the daily misfortunes of the suffering. They cannot be seen to have genuine empathy. Government has a dismal record of empty words and insufficient delivery. Spending fortunes on one investigative commission after another is simply seen to be money misdirected.

What a sad state of affairs with which to celebrate the 90th birthday of that giant of a man, Nelson Mandela. What kind of a sad image is conjured up of his successors - indecisive, inefficient, unreliable little people scampering about ineffectively in the shadow of his legend?