Former president Thabo Mbeki. Picture: Masi Losi
Former president Thabo Mbeki claims the violent xenophobic attacks, which flared up in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township and soon spread to other parts of Gauteng in 2008, formed part of a “planned operation”.
Mbeki dropped the bombshell on Wednesday during the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs’ (TM-School) student engagement event at Unisa in Pretoria.
The startling revelation is in stark contrast to the lofty ideals of the African Renaissance championed by the former statesman.
According to Mbeki, the motive for the “planned operation” was part of deliberate strategy to force Zimbabweans back to their country so they could vote against then-president Robert Mugabe.
At the time, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Mugabe failed to secure an outright majority in Zimbabwe’s general elections, necessitating a run-off election scheduled for June 2008.
Mbeki explained that, as the president, he was privy to an intelligence report, which listed the people and motives behind the series of horrific xenophobic attacks that made international headlines.
“There’s an intelligence report with names, dates and venues where people met and planned this and so on. It’s presented as a xenophobic attack by the people of Alexandra,” he revealed.
The former president expressed regret over his decision not to declassify the intelligence report at the time. He emphasized that the people of Alexandra were not responsible for the violence
“It was wrong… It was organised, systematic and for a political purpose. I’m seeing the mistake we made. We should’ve declassified that intelligence report.”
The former president also expressed the belief that the people of Alexandra was not responsible for the start of the attacks.
“Historically, the African community here [SA] has never been xenophobic about other Africans.
“So, when all manner of trouble breaks out in Alexandra in 2008…attacks on these foreigners, particularly Zimbabweans… I say when I saw that, as president, ‘This is not Alexandra township’. Alexandra, for decades, has had Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, and so on,” Mbeki said.
The former leader also told the students that the economic crisis in South Africa is not caused by foreigners. He however stated that the country needs to strengthen its border management processes.
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The 2008 xenophobic attacks, which were accompanied by widespread looting and vandalism, left at least 62 people dead, 1 700 injured and thousands displaced.
Within days of the start of the attacks on 11 May in Alexandra, the violence spread around the country, with Ramaphosa settlement on the East Rand becoming one of the areas which − according to The Guardian, witnessed “inhumanity on an unthinkable level”.
In one grim incident in the East Rand, a 35-year-old Mozambican citizen, Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, was beaten, stabbed and set alight in his own blankets by a mob and burned to death.
The photographs of “The burning man”, as he became known, were splashed across newspapers around the world, bringing home the barbaric nature of the violence against foreigners.
No one was charged for his murder, and the case was closed in 2010.
As a result of the xenophobic violence that swept through the province in May and June 2008, about 100 000 African nationals were forced to seek refuge in camps set up in Johannesburg.
Towards the end of last month, Mbeki issued a staunch warning against the rise of what he labelled “xenophobic Afrophobia”.
He spoke out following the uproar surrounding Chidimma Adetshina’s participation in the Miss SA pageant and the violent UK riots which erupted in July this year.
Mbeki warned that the UK riots could ignite similar “riotous rampage among our own people!”
“Given the sordid response to the Miss South Africa candidacy of Miss Chidimma Adetshina, it could easily happen that such negative forces in our country could use xenophobic Afrophobia to engage in the ‘moronic inferno’ to which [British writer and journalist] Jason Cowley referred.”
Mbeki further warned that “should such a grouping arise,” negative forces would be encouraged because those who take great pride in demanding ‘Mabahambe!’, and others of their ilk, are now sitting in both parliament and government”.
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