JOHANNESBURG The South African government late last week blamed the resurgence of xenophobic attacks, which have displaced more than 2 500 predominantly-Zimbabwean foreign nationals, on farmers and labour brokers, whom it accused of combining to exploit migrant labourers. South Africans last Tuesday attacked their migrant counterparts and looted their homes at the De Doorns informal settlement, after accusing the foreigners of stealing their jobs and competing with them for scarce national resources, in what is now feared to spark nationwide attacks like those of last year, which resulted in the death of at least 62 people and the displacement of thousands others.
Property worth millions of rands was either looted or destroyed during that violence, whose cause was premised on the same argument by the locals, who also accused the foreigners of stealing their women and causing an escalation to crime, but deputy Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba late last week said that the two incidents were incomparable and not linked.
This time we are dealing with a problem caused by the exploitation of migrant workers by both labour brokers and farmers in the affected province, Gigaba told The Zimbabwean on Friday.
We have learnt that the farmers favour employing migrant labourers so that they can pay them very little, while labour brokers fleece the same employees by taking away as much as two thirds of their monthly salaries for organizing those jobs for them.
Gigaba said that his government would launch an investigation into the conduct of the farmers and the labour brokers, adding that the locals were angry against the foreigners for accepting the paltry allowances.
This exploitation has alienated the migrant community from the locals, who are now not being employed because they do not accept the exploitation, said deputy minister.
Meanwhile, the affected migrants said that they would not return to their shacks anytime soon, as they still feared for their safety, while others said that they had lost everything and had nowhere to start.
Aid agencies like the International Red Cross Society had begun to move in with assistance, while the local government department said that it would not intervene in the plight of the victims, pushing the responsibility to the local municipality.
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