The arrest of 12 people for the brutal killings of two foreigners in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, was welcomed by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday.
”We strongly condemn the attacks on foreign residents, including the murders, which seem to have been motivated by xenophobia,” said the trade union federation in statement.
Two foreign nationals were killed on Tuesday when a crowd of people assaulted them and set their shacks alight in the Brazzaville informal settlement.
Cosatu demanded that security be increased in the area to protect residents. It said it was totally opposed to xenophobia — hostility to people of a different race or nationality.
”It sets worker against worker and the poor against the poor, when we should be uniting our class in our common struggle for liberation and a better life, against those who exploit us.”
Cosatu blamed the apartheid regime for the problems in the country and said it ”deliberately ” destroyed the economic infrastructure of neighbouring countries.
”It supported revolutionary movements in order to destabilise them.”
Cosatu said it was tragic that some of South Africa’s citizens had turned their anger on African illegal and legal immigrants, blaming them for high rates of unemployment, poverty and crime.
”Such xenophobic views however have no scientific grounds. The migrants are scapegoats for socio-economic problems that existed long before they arrived and will continue as long as we remain trapped in an economic system that perpetuates high levels of poverty and unemployment at around 40%.”
Jessie Duarte, the African National Congress’s spokesperson, said: ”Just as South Africans have effectively united against racism and sexism, the ANC calls on all our people to fight racism and intolerance directed against foreign nationals.”
The party said the incidents in Atteridgeville were ”deeply concerning”.
There needed to be an all-round effort to combat xenophobia and dispel many of the myths that surrounded immigrants and refugees.
The ANC called on all state institutions and security agencies to apply the country’s immigration laws in a consistent and even-handed manner. – Sapa