I would like to say more about this story but am running out of time tonight, so I’m just going to post it. The story is from the Associated Press and is just more in the sad saga of a nation sinking under the weight of uncontrolled immigration. South Africa, the country that was dubbed the “rainbow nation” for its welcoming stance on immigrants (come one and all they said) has seen 60 people killed in “xenophobic” riots in the last few weeks alone.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — City authorities vowed Tuesday to challenge a court order to move some 3,500 immigrants living in a camp near a popular tourist destination after they were forced from their homes in a wave of xenophobic violence.
The sprawling camp on a wind-swept beach near the Cape of Good Hope has come to symbolize South Africa’s dilemma about what to do with the tens of thousands displaced by the attacks that erupted a month ago.
Cape Town’s High Court ruled late Monday that the city must open community centers to house the displaced.
But authorities said moving the immigrants would risk exacerbating tensions with native South Africans, many of whom accuse the foreigners of “stealing” scarce jobs and services. The xenophobic attacks left at least 60 people dead.
“We want to reduce tensions, not increase them,” said Robert Macdonald, spokesman for Cape Town.
Civil rights groups have charged that the “safe sites,” such as the camp at a former picnic area at Soetwater, are like internment camps.
“The conditions there are so bad,” said Patrick Chauke, the powerful head of a parliamentary Home Affairs committee. “The tents have been blown by the wind. There are women and children who are dumped there.”
The camp includes nearly 2,000 Somali refugees. They say they are too afraid to return to the communities that chased them out and looted their stores, can’t return to Somalia, and want the U.N. refugee agency to move them to another country such as Australia or the United States.
U.N. representatives over the weekend said they couldn’t be relocated, prompting the Somalis to threaten charity volunteers, trash food and begin a hunger strike. They also threatened to jump into the rough, icy waters and claimed that several had already committed suicide by drowning.