Shops Owned By Foreigners Looted In South Africa, Police Ignore Foreigners

Policed nabbed 12 people in Jeppestown overnight for trying to loot foreign-owned shops, as State Security Minister David Mahlobo vowed to bring instigators to book.
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Gauteng police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said Jeppestown in Johannesburg was the only place where violence was reported on Thursday night.
He could not confirm that some cars were set alight, but said there were people targeting foreign shops again.
"Twelve suspects were arrested for trying to break into foreign-owned shops," said Dlamini.
Earlier this week, messages warning foreigners of imminent attacks in Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria were spread via SMS and WhatsApp.
"Just those prank messages is a co-ordinated effort," said Mahlobo. "But the intelligence services, they are hard at work.
Ethiopian national Sarah Kidane is still traumatized after being violently forced out of her shop in Soweto.
"I'm not feeling OK," said a tearful Kidane. "I was losing too much. I was losing my life.... I don't have any choice now. Go back there? The people are not good; they will start again" with the violence.
Other victims say South African police are turning a blind eye to their fate.
"I went to report to the police but no one helped me that time. I was in the police station, even -- no police even that time.  I don't know what was happening.  I didn't receive anything," said Gitaw Aniyo, 32.
Many others, like 25-year-old John Alemu, say they are puzzled by the attacks.
"We are African brothers, but they give us problems here. They kill our brothers and they rob our own shops," Alemu said.
On Thursday, South Africa's president, Jacob Zuma, denounced the anti-immigrant attacks and called for an end to the violence, Reuters news agency reported.
South African authorities have denied the country is experiencing xenophobic attacks, preferring to call them "criminal acts."
Abdirikaz Ali Osman, national secretary of the Somali Community Board of South Africa, disagrees.
"To me it's pure xenophobic attacks, which have been targeted [against] the foreign nationals who are living in the country – especially those who are having small, informal business in the townships and the informal settlements," Osman said. "So it's obvious that it's xenophobic and Afrophobic violence, actually."
Osman is pleading with authorities to swiftly intervene before these foreign nationals, who have already lost their livelihood, lose their lives as well.
Although the attacks are intensifying each day, the foreign nationals, especially those from Somali and Ethiopia, say they would rather die in South Africa than return to their countries of origin, where they are likely to be met with even more violence.
Source: southafricalatestnews.co.za