Zimbabweans fear for their lives after attacks

Dennis Dube was in his one-room shack sorting out Christmas gifts for his eight children back in Zimbabwe when they threw the first petrol bomb through his open door last Sunday evening. A legal Zimbabwe immigrant, Dennis has been living and working in Johannesburg since 1976. When he got his resident's papers five years ago he bought a plot at Zandspruit informal settlement northwest of Johannesburg and built a house for himself and his South African wife. Now he sits on a steel bench munching donated biscuits in a church hall. Dennis lost everything when his neighbours torched his home and threatened to kill him if he was seen in the area again. "I'm just so sad that they (South Africans) can treat me like this, I've never known anything like this," he told IRIN on Wednesday. Local residents of the impoverished Zandspruit settlement decided at the weekend to expel the hundreds of Zimbabweans living among them and destroy their homes. They accuse them of involvement in violent crime and taking the jobs of South Africans. "Because they (Zimbabweans) are desperate, they work for less, it's driving down wages, we're sick of them," one resident shouted. Trouble had been brewing since the murders last month of two South Africans, both blamed on Zimbabweans. Locals with Zimbabwean friends were also targeted. A still-smoking ruin was all that remained of Mary Tlou's shack - somebody said she had a foreign boyfriend. "The Zimbabwe people must go back, we don't want them in South Africa, we don't have anything for them here," one Zandspruit resident told IRIN. Others at the settlement said they had no problem with other immigrants like Malawians and Mozambicans, "they are cool, it's the Zimbabweans who do all the crime, and most are illegals" one unemployed youth said. Police spokeswoman Terry-Anne Booyse said more than 20 people have been arrested for public violence over the past two days and they would appear in court in Johannesburg on Wednesday. The Zandspruit squatter camp has about 15,000 shacks and some 50,000 residents living there. "We desperately need blankets, food and clothing for these people, they've come here with nothing," Pauline Piert, a Johannesburg charity worker, told IRIN from the church hall where the Zimbabweans are being temporarily housed. Most of those chased out of Zandspruit said they were too scared to ever go back. "I'm actually going to go back to Bulawayo (Zimbabwe's second city), I'd rather starve there than be murdered here," John Sibongo, a gardener, told IRIN. Attacks on African non-nationals are on the increase in South Africa. The latest violence that left at least 10 people injured and about a thousand homeless, came barely a month after South Africa hosted the UN-sponsored world racism conference at which solutions to the rise in xenophobia worldwide were sought. The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) - which has tried to tackle the problem of racial intolerance in poor communities through its Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign - condemned the "racial cleansing" at Zandspruit. "Whilst we acknowledge the dire economic situation faced by many South Africans, actions such as those in Zandspruit merely fuel xenophobic hatred rather than address the core issues of economic underdevelopment", SAHRC's Phumla Mthala told IRIN. The steady flow of migrants from Zimbabwe into South Africa has increased significantly in recent months as drought, flooding, economic decline and the government's chaotic land reform programme have all stimulated emigration south. "I'm here quite simply because there is nothing for me at home," Jonas, a migrant carpenter from Chiredzi, close to the common border, told IRIN. Some observers believe economic meltdown and food shortages in Zimbabwe will lead to a flood of migrants into South Africa and a rise in the kind of anti-foreigner violence seen at Zandspruit over the past few days.