OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 8.15pm.
THE xenophobic mob-murder of three foreigners on a train on Thursday night is not the first attack of its kind, and is likely to spark further killing, experts warned on Friday.
Centre for Policy Studies director Steven Friedman said recent studies have revealed a strong resentment towards aliens, especially in Gauteng and the Western Cape. “Since 1994 there has been a heavy groundswell of anti-foreigner sentiment among whites as well as blacks.” This claimed the lives of at least 20 foreigners in Cape Town last year, some of them dying in incidents on passenger trains, he said.
Two Senegalese and one Mozambican were killed on a train near Pretoria on Thursday afternoon after a mob accused them of stealing jobs from South Africans. An organisation for the unemployed, calling itself Malamulela Social Movement, on Friday distanced itself from what it termed a “heinous crime [that] should be ruthlessly dealt with by the might of the law”.
* Meanwhile, a report released on Friday indicates that African immigrants have, contrary to xenophobic stereotyping, created a number of jobs for South African workers through establishing small and medium-sized enterprises.
Africa Insight magazine reports a research study by Wits Geography and Environmental Studies Professor Christian Rogerson shows that businesses in South Africa started by non-South African Development Community businesses created an average of 4,06 jobs per business, compared to SADC businesses’ average of 2,65. In the latter category 53% of employees are from their employers’ home countries, compared to 27% in the non-SADC category. South Africans constituted about 50% of the workforce of non-SADC small and medium-sized businesses and 40% in SADC businesses.