JOHANNESBURG At least two people were shot in Cape Town last week, in what has worsened the already smoldering fears of a repeat of last years xenophobic attacks.
The Zimbabwean learnt that the two foreigners were part of a group of about 400 people, most of them Zimbabweans, whom the Cape City Council wants to evict from Bluewaters safety site, where they have been living since last years attacks.
The two men were shot by a group of thugs in Khayelitsha, where they had gone to seek alternative accommodation, said Dale Mckinley, spokesperson for the Coalition Against Xenophobia (CAX).
They were both seriously injured after one was shot in the hip, while the other was shot on the leg. The thugs told them that they were not welcome in the area and should return where they came from.
The shootings follow hard on the heels of recent reports that some traders in Gugulethu, also in Cape Town, allegedly held a series of secret meetings discussing how they could remove foreign traders from the area.
During the series of meetings, said to have been held over the past three weeks, the local businessmen are said to have blamed the foreign traders for the decline in their business, and resolved to deal with them.
The foreign traders, most of them of Somali origin, have reportedly been given the end of this week as the deadline by which they should have closed their shops.
Police in the Western Cape confirmed to The Zimbabwean this week that they had received reports on threats against foreigners.
We are currently monitoring the situation after receiving such reports this week, said Captain Ntomboxolo Ntsititsi, police spokesperson for Nyanga, where a group of 25 men identifying themselves as local business people are said to have ordered some Somali shopkeepers to close shop.
We cannot allow that to happen this time and we plan to deploy more police officers in the affected areas immediately.
During the xenophobic violence that swept through South Africa last May, 62 people were killed, hundreds raped and 150000 displaced, while property worth millions of rands was either looted or destroyed.
The locals accused foreigners of causing an escalation in crime, competing with them for jobs and scarce national resources and stealing their women.
In 2006, 30 Somalis were killed during earlier xenophobic attacks in Masiphumelele, an informal settlement in the Western Cape.
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