Tag: South Africa

South Africa: Somali refugees protest xenophobia in Cape Town

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update June 21st:  South Africa no longer the number one most desired country for asylum seekers, gee, I wonder why!  Here.

Update June 14th:  Some humor about the Obama trip here at my other blog.  Minnesota Somalis protest in solidarity with brothers in S.A. here.

Update June 13th:  Obama family trip to South Africa later this month to cost US taxpayers $60-$100 million! (here).  There is more!  No safari! Sniper team nixed (snipers for wild animals that might eat the Obamas), here.

Update June 11th:  South African Muslim lawyers want Obama arrested when he gets to the country later this month, here at Creeping Sharia.

Update!  See this interesting turn of events as American Somalis protest in solidarity, here.

Barack and Michelle are planning a little trip to South Africa later this month.  Do the Somali protestors know that?

Somalis protesting in Cape Town

We had learned previously that Barack had been inspired during his college years by the anti-apartheid movement of Nelson Mandela (his first political cause!) and I expect they are going to South Africa once again (or at least Michelle is going a second time, remember the expensive 2011 trip!) to extoll the virtues of the socialist Rainbow Nation.

You can bet the African National Congress is going to hide their refugee problems when the Obama’s arrive.

Somalis protest xenophobia (they call it xenophobia because everyone involved is the same race, this is black on black violence).

From the BBC:

Members of the Somali community in South Africa have marched to parliament in Cape Town to protest against recent attacks on foreigners.

Three Somalis have been killed this month and the Somali government has requested the South African authorities to do more to protect their nationals.  [We learned yesterday that tens of thousands of Somalis are going home to Somalia—ed]

About 200 people took part in the protest, holding a banner reading: “Everyone is a foreigner somewhere.”

Correspondents say xenophobic attacks have increased recently.

Some of the protesters accused the authorities of not doing enough to prevent attack on foreigners, especially Somalis, or prosecute those responsible.

Two Somali brothers were allegedly hacked to death with an axe in the northern Limpopo province on Thursday night.

Last week, Abdi Nasr Mahmoud was stoned to death in Port Elizabeth.

Mohamed Aden Osman told the BBC that criminals saw Somalis as “soft targets”.

Someone should tell Barack and Michelle that Mandela’s Rainbow Nation is a myth.

Michelle and Mandela in 2011

From an earlier BBC story:

….some believe the African National Congress (ANC) government has become distracted by other things.

In May 2008 international newspapers carried the horrific image of Ernesto Nhamuave – a Mozambican man who was “necklaced” – torched by a marauding mob – simply for being a foreigner.

The 35-year-old father of three later died of his injuries.

It resembled the appalling violence during the struggle against white minority rule.

During last year’s xenophobic violence the clashes were between black Africans: locals and those considered outsiders.

New readers:  You can learn more about the Rainbow Nation mythology and South Africa’s treatment of refugees in our archives, here.  There is growing pressure on western countries to begin resettling South Africa’s refugee over flow.

“Rainbow Nation” of South Africa is leading anti-immigrant country in the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Asylum-seekers of different nationalities queue during a rain storm outside the refugee office in Cape Town. The long queues have led to violent clashes between refugees and the police.  photo: AP

They are having uprisings against refugees and asylum seekers (again!) in the country touted by the likes of Michelle Obama and US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a model country for equality and justice.

I’ve been meaning to write about the latest wave of violence for the last few days, but those refugee terrorist stories in the US and the UK have been distracting me.

As you read this latest information on a nearly three-year-old study (why report it now?) on xenophobia in the land of Mandela, remember whatever this country does going forward cannot be blamed on racist white people.  The country is run by the black African National Congress.   That is why every story uses the “xenophobia” charge.  “Racism” doesn’t work when both the persecutors and the persecuted are the same race!

We would like an electrified border fence please!

From the Saturday Star:

Johannesburg – The attitudes of South Africans to migrants may be softening, but research shows that one third of people canvassed still believe refugees should live in camps on the borders, and more than half say they still don’t want want refugees anywhere in the country.

More than a third of people canvassed also still associate migrants with crime, a quarter say they are ready to join forces to stop migrants operating a business in South Africa, and 41 percent are all for mandatory HIV testing of refugees.

While the researchers involved in the 2010 Southern African Migration Programme suggest that growing contact between migrants and South Africans may be having a positive effect on the attitudes of South Africans, they warn of an “unyielding cohort” willing to use violence to address the perceived migrant “threat”.

The article goes on to attempt to convince readers that conditions are improving and people are “softening” toward migrants who want what the South African constitution promises every person, which is everything—peace, security, a home, a job, an education (blah! blah! blah!).    Then this:

But the study warned of an “unyielding cohort”, and said that unless there was a concerted effort to change attitudes, “migrants and refugees will continue to be soft targets of xenophobic discrimination in South Africa”.

The latest research showed that a quarter of respondents were ready to jointly prevent migrants from neighbouring countries from operating a business, and a similar number were also willing to prevent migrants from moving into their neighbourhoods. [Interesting to think about—do poor and middle class black South Africans have a greater desire for self-preservation then Americans, or Brits or Aussies?—ed]

Also, just less than half (41 percent) of black and white respondents believed migrants were carriers of disease. The same number also wanted mandatory HIV testing of refugees, and 18 percent said HIV treatment should not be afforded to refugees.   [BTW, the US permits HIV positive and TB infected refugees to enter the US, and you (taxpayers) are paying for their treatment—ed]

“Globally, South Africa is still the country most opposed to immigration, where nearly 80 percent of citizens either support prohibition on the entry of migrants, or would like to place strict limits on it,” the study said. A quarter of South Africans wanted migrants deported regardless of their skills status, and 63 percent wanted electrified fences on borders.

More than 60 percent of respondents of all races also believed migrants took jobs away from locals.

We have dozens of posts on the “Rainbow Nation” going back several years.  Read all about the post-apartheid  immigration problems in South Africa (and the hypocrisy), here.  This S.A. mess is a prime example of the political Left’s intellectual dishonesty—the inability or unwillingness to recognize the powerful human forces behind ethnic nationalism.

And, one more thing, if you think this doesn’t affect you, it does!  The US (Australia too) is now taking refugees from South Africa and they aren’t the white asylum-seekers.

The “Rainbow Nation” is being crushed by refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, and assorted illegal aliens

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Michelle meets Mandela in the “Rainbow Nation” in June 2011. AP Photo/ Debbie Yazbek

I haven’t mentioned the troubles in South Africa for a while.  Yeh, believe it or not, they have more problems in Michelle Obama’s favorite country than an Olympic “bladerunner” star murdering his gorgeous girlfriend.

Their borders are flooded with “asylum seekers” who have heard about their Commie Constitution and Bill of Rights (and believe the promises to be true).

I reported in a post last spring that:  The African National Congress (the party of Mandela) says everyone gets:  a job, food, housing, fairness, peace and security.

Michelle brought her mom, Mrs. Robinson, and the girls to South Africa in 2011 to admire what Nelson Mandela had brought to the formerly apartheid nation (now the supposed model to the world)—fairness and socialism for all, here.

So, guess what!  The ANC is, a year later, looking for a way to stop the flow of migrants who want what has been promised and is considering refugee camps as a possible way to control the border-crossers.    This is the story I came across today, but there is this story I missed from December that comes before today’s news about camps.

Sound familiar?

From Business Day Live (Johannesburg) (emphasis mine):

THE African National Congress (ANC) has once again signalled that it wants to see the country’s immigration policy comprehensively reviewed, citing concerns over the abuse of the asylum-seeking system and competition for jobs between foreigners and local unemployed.

Since 1994 South Africa has adopted one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. This, together with corruption, and poor border and immigration management, has meant that South Africa has the highest number of asylum seekers in the world and an unknown number of illegal immigrants.

But immigration policy has become ambiguous in recent years, with mixed signals coming from the department and ministry of home affairs over its future direction.

Government officials said this week that, in its national conference resolution on peace and stability adopted last week, the ANC stated that undocumented immigrants posed an economic and security threat. The party further believed that the inward flow of low-skilled labour needed to be balanced with the negative effect on employment.

[…..]

The harder line on immigration was reinforced in the organisational report to the ANC conference last week.

[…..]

“During the last five years there were developments that pointed to the need for a more comprehensive approach to the question of management of foreign nationals entering South Africa,” Mr Mantashe’s report reads.

These included the high number of cases of crime involving foreign nationals and the number of undocumented foreign nationals who have jobs in the leisure, hospitality and agricultural sectors in the face of high unemployment among locals.

Now, here is the story this week about fears that the ANC will establish refugee camps:

REFUGEES and asylum seekers receive substantially less protection from the government than they used to when the asylum system was first established in the 1990s. This is claimed by Lawyers for Human Rights and the African Centre for Migration and Society, in a new report published last week.

The report, which monitors trends over the past two years, says South Africa has experienced a de facto policy shift in its approach to asylum seekers and refugees, although immigration policy has not been officially reviewed.

However, a policy review is imminent, raising fears among human rights groups that the country will tighten immigration at the expense of rights.

Would someone tell Obama (both Obamas) and Grover Norquist (the bullfrog slayer) that a country cannot survive OPEN BORDERS and full rights to stuff—welfare, jobs, housing, food and fairness—as is plainly demonstrated by the RAINBOW NATION!

Sheesh!  The next thing you know they will be wanting a border fence!

For our whole archive on South Africa, go here.