“If I go back home it wont be good for South Africa” says Nigerian who suffered Xenophobic attack
Former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode has warned South Africans against further attacks on Nigerians.
“There was a standoff between 100 protestors and 100 or so mostly Somali nationals who had come out on to the streets, saying they would defend themselves, their families homes and businesses”, said Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg.
One of the buildings is a mechanic garage with 28 cars under repairs, with other vital documents, were burned during the attack.
The attacks were repeated in May 2008 leaving at least 62 people dead, although 21 of the people killed were South Africans. Organisers claim to have peaceful ambitions, but their demands fit with a past of xenophobic attacks and attacks against foreigners this year in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Others reportedly looted shops that are owned by foreign nationals.
Aaron-Mnguni then promised that the South African Government was investigating the matter.
On the reports regarding the violence making rounds in the media, she said: “The ministry has not received reports of any death of a Nigerian in the latest incidents of attacks against foreigners”.
Reports out of South Africa this week say, some 20 shops believed to belong to immigrants were looted in the country’s capital, Pretoria, although police refused to say if the attackers were specifically targeting foreigners.
Mrs Dabiri-Erewa described the attacks as an “unnecessary setback”.
The Nigerian envoy to South Africa has visited her affected community and is offering sanctuary to some Nigerians at the nation’s local consulate.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on foreign affairs and the diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa had called on the South African government to stop the attacks on Monday.
However, the Foreign Affairs Minister, in the interview with journalists, said boycotts may be the last option, adding however that the issue could be taken at the Ministers’ and Heads of State level at the ECOWAS or at the African Union Heads of State level.
He wrote: “The South Africans must be careful”.
“We are sick and exhausted of foreigners who are coming to sell drugs and kill our people, we can’t let the community go down like this”, an unemployed man in his mid-twenties, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
“If I go back home it won’t be good for the South Africans”, a Nigerian man said after a mob ransacked his home and stole his belongings in Pretoria West on Saturday afternoon.
Source: pressoracle.com
