20 May, 2008IMF joins Numsa and others in call for end to xenophobic violence in South Africa.
SOUTH AFRICA: The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) called on the union's local and regional structures to convene special meetings yesterday (May 19) as xenophobic attacks on African immigrants in Johannesburg claimed 10 lives in an inferno of fire, leaving hundreds injured and thousands of foreigners destitute.
The violence against immigrants started in Alexandre last week and quickly spread to many other areas of the city of Johannesburg. Some immigrants were burned and others beaten to death. Numsa also fears that industrial workplaces are threatened as the attacks could turn into a humanitarian crisis and an angry destruction of the country's resources.
In a country where forty per cent of all citizens are unemployed, it is thought that many South African's blame foreigners for criminal behavior and for taking their jobs. South Africa had the highest crime rate in the world with more than fifty murders a day.
President Thabo Mbeki announced that a panel had been set up to look into the xenophobia attacks, a move welcomed by Numsa.
"Government, labour, civil society organisations and business should immediately get their act together if these wanton attacks and utter devastation of property were to be nipped in the bud," said the union.
Numsa rejects the notion that these attacks were the work of isolated criminals arguing instead that socio-economic realities and morally decadent business interests must be considered to be part of deep root causes among others.
The International Metalworkers' Federation also called on the xenophobic violence to end. "Such massive unemployment is a structural problem of a capitalist system that cares little about the poor, wherever they are from or live. The South African government's failure to deliver services in poor communities where most immigrants live has placed poor African immigrants and poor South Africans in competition with each other. Blaming foreigners and launching violent attacks on those living in South Africa will benefit no one except the capitalist class," said IMF general secretary Marcello Malentacchi.
The major outbreak of violence has shaken the country and Numsa will launch a campaign to educate metalworkers against the dangers of criminalizing illegal aliens and portraying other African immigrants as undesirable people.