Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has accused Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance and mayor of Cape Town, of fanning the flame of xenophobia by saying that attacks on foreigners were in part due to the fact that foreigners were selling the drug tik to South African children.
Responding as the only minister in the house to a series of members’ statement in the National Assembly on Thursday about the xenophobic attacks, Manuel said: “It is necessary for all of us to guard against labelling and it is necessary for all of us elected representatives everywhere to guard against fanning the flames.”
He said that he was “rather struck by hearing the leader of the DA, Mayor Zille, addressing a meeting in Mitchell’s Plain last night, saying the xenophobia is caused by the fact that foreigners sell tik to our children. It is wrong, it has to be fundamentally wrong to inflame it in this kind of way.”
To a growing barrage of heckling from the DA benches, Manuel said that elected representatives had a responsibility not to fan the flames because it was not in the interest of any South African, and because the issues on the ground could not be resolved by the military or even by the police.
He suggested that the way to resolve the issues was by elected leaders going out and acting as MP Lumka Yengeni had in Dunoon, and to involve the police in precautionary action in her constituency.
He was echoed by his deputy, Jabu Moleketi, who said that ANC branches everywhere “are concretely dealing with this scourge”. – I-Net Bridge