Things turned deadly in Mossel Bay this weekend — Mozambique says five of its citizens were killed in xenophobic violence, and hundreds more are now heading home.

According to cbinews.tv, Mozambique’s government confirmed late on Monday that five Mozambicans were killed in “xenophobic attacks” in South Africa over the weekend.

Around 800 Mozambican nationals got caught up in the violence that flared up in Mossel Bay, a coastal town in the Western Cape, on Friday. The area’s been seeing protests against illegal migrants — the same kind of demonstrations that have been popping up across South Africa lately.

Maputo’s press office also said two more people died in a road accident while travelling back to Mozambique in a private vehicle.

The unrest pushed about 300 Mozambicans to head home on their own on Saturday. Another 500+ have been moved to a safe location in the Western Cape, and repatriation to Mozambique kicked off today, 1 June, cbinews.tv reports.

South African police are investigating the deaths of two men at an informal settlement in Mossel Bay, roughly 380 kilometres east of Cape Town, where xenophobic attacks were reported. They haven’t said if the deaths are linked to the protests or confirmed the men’s nationalities yet.

But Mossel Bay’s mayor, Dirk Kotze, didn’t hold back. He shared his “deep concern and dismay at the current xenophobic attacks where people have been murdered, houses burned, and families displaced”.

With unemployment high and the economy under strain, anti-immigrant feeling in South Africa has surged in recent months. Braam Hanekom, director of Cape Town non-profit Passop, put it bluntly: “People are frustrated… It’s hard to fight for jobs. It’s hard to fix the economy… It’s very easy to blame someone… Foreign nationals are the soft target that frustrated communities have chosen to pick on.”

Accused of “flooding” the country, foreigners actually make up just 4% of South Africa’s population, according to the Wits University-based Migrating for Work Research Consortium. The study also found foreign workers are more likely to take jobs South Africans avoid, or start their own businesses — 21% are self-employed, 11% are employers.

South Africa has dealt with waves of xenophobic violence since 2008, when dozens of migrants were killed and thousands displaced. And tensions aren’t cooling down. One citizen-led group, March and March, has given illegal migrants until 30 June to leave the country.

Source: cbinews.tv

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