Update September 13th: Retailers back down, apologize and Somali shops can stay.
Update September 11th: “Talks” begin.
You probably think I’m getting obsessed with South Africa. I guess I am. It is because what is happening in the “rainbow nation” demonstrates clearly basic principles of how a country, set up to worship diversity, cannot survive open borders as jobs and resources become scarce. Note this is not about race, everyone involved is black, but it does involve religion and the advance of Islam throughout the African continent.
Here is the latest on the conflict coming to us from The Mail and Guardian of London. A chapter of a Chamber of Commerce apparently has threatened Somali street vendors with violence if they continue setting up shops:
The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Nafcoc) in the Western Cape has sent letters to about 200 Somali traders who have returned to the township of Khayelitsha, warning them to close their shops or face physical violence.
The Mail & Guardian has seen the letters, sent by a group of Khayelitsha traders belonging to Nafcoc and operating as the Zanokhanyo Retailers Association.
The traders tell Somali shopkeepers to close their shops by September 21 or they will “resolve to much higher actions that will include physically fighting” for their rights.
A Nafcoc representative responded that the foreigners (Somalis) are killing their businesses, their children are hungry and when they complain they are called “xenophobic.”
…. Nafcoc’s Western Cape secretary, Mandise Njoli, said that the Somalis “fight civil wars in their own countries and then come here and take away our livelihood. Maybe we should start a civil war so that they will leave our communities.”
He added that the Somali traders “are Arabs and they’re in our country illegally. Why can’t they be kept in refugee camps?
“We’re all members of Nafcoc and we are dying here,
my sister. Our children are hungry. These people work for two cents and when we complain about the unfair advantage, then we’re called xenophobic,” Njoli said.
“We can’t even do business with these people because today he calls himself Abdul and tomorrow he is Muhamed. During the day Shoprite takes our business and during the night, it’s the foreigners.
“The Somalis are Arabs and Muslims and those countries have lots of money and they’re helping their countrymen. Our own country and democracy, which we paid so dearly for, does nothing to help us.”
The signer of the controversial letter, Sydwell Citwa, chairperson of Zanokhanyo Retailers, went on to reiterate that their children are hungry and the Muslims are getting an unfair advantage from the Islamic power structure in South Africa. And, afterall, he says, we (black South Africans) fought and died for democracy, and what do we get for it.
Our problem is simple: We are hungry. We are angry. And the Somalis are undercutting us.
“These people come into the country with nothing and the next minute they have stocked shops and fridges. We’ve done our research and we know that the Muslim Judicial Council [MJC] is helping them because they’re Muslim.
“We also want help from our government because we gave them power. We are the ones who fought for freedom and democracy and now these Somalis are here eating our democracy,” Citwa said.
To new readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch, the US State Department has allowed over 82,000 Somali refugees to enter the US in recent years. Why do we think that an implosion, like in South Africa, could not happen here?