The foreign nationals who were forced to flee their homes to escape from violent mobs in the Boksburg informal settlements on Monday are looking for a temporary place of shelter.
Xenophobic attacks broke out in Jerusalem informal settlement, and hundreds of foreigners, including men and women with children as young as two months old, fled and took cover at nearby filling stations and in open fields in Witfield on Monday.
It was reported that angry South Africans stormed shacks and shops belonging to foreign nationals in the informal settlement and Witfield areas.
Barely 12 hours after the Jerusalem violence, xenophobic attacks erupted in Angelo informal settlement, where hundreds of foreign nationals who live there had to grab what they could and run to safety on Monday evening.
According to Mozambican national Alishadre Zimba, who is among the hundreds who fled the informal settlements, they were asleep when they heard loud crashing noises and then noticed a group of people, some of whom were armed with guns and crude weapons, kicking their shacks and shouting, “All foreign nationals leave our country before you are all killed!”
“We were very scared. There was no time to take anything and some people fled empty-handed, without even their shoes. There are people here who don’t have anything, no food, no money, no blankets and jerseys. And we know that the mobs have broken into our shacks and stolen everything. They said they were chasing us away because we are foreigners,” said Zimba.
Zimba’s countryman Kasmir Sithole said he and his group fled Angelo informal settlement after their South African neighbours started threatening them, saying all foreign nationals would be removed from Angelo informal settlement when dusk fell on Monday.
The threats were indeed carried out as groups of unidentified people started burning tyres, blockading Main Reef Road and attacking foreign-owned properties, prompting more foreigners to flee the area on Monday evening.
Police from both Boksburg and Boksburg North police stations had to be deployed to the settlements to restore calm.
The displaced groups spent the night in the park near Witfield Primary and several nearby filling stations, including the Engen garage on Pretoria Road, and the Total and Engen garages on Main Road in Witfield.
Meanwhile, police in Reiger Park reported that mobs rampaged through the Ramaphosa township, vandalising and looting foreign-owned businesses in the area on Monday evening.
Reportedly, many members of the community maintain that foreign nationals come to South Africa and steal jobs and business opportunities from South Africans.
In Witfield, community members and several local security companies were seen patrolling their neighbourhoods on Monday evening and paying more attention to the hot spots, including Main Street, where the mob had vandalised foreign-owned shops earlier that day.
Major violent incidents occurred in different parts around the province recently, where foreign nationals were attacked and displaced.
This publication has also approached the municipality to find out if it has made any contingency plans to cater for the victims, such as setting up temporary shelters for the hundreds of foreign nationals who have been displaced by the violence and threats across the city.
