Its a Sunday afternoon in Johannesburgs Honeydew suburb. Children are playing football on a bare-earth pitches and a couple of men are sitting in the shade of a tree drinking from large beer bottles. They feel less interested in the ongoing World Cup crazy, rather looking like people plotting something. Honeydew is a rather middle class suburb of Johannesburg where many foreign nationals feel much safer from the marauding criminals and xenophobic South Africans.
With the World Cup in town, many would have thought the hosts would learn a thing or two about being all-time hosts, not just when a tournament such as the World Cup comes to town.
In fact they seem to have learnt nothing with the resurfacing of xenophobic threats especially after the loss of Bafana Bafana. Locals seem to be galvanizing themselves for an attack venting their anger of the Bafana loss on foreign nationals.
This is quite apparent even in perceived safer suburbs such as Honeydew. Occasional xenophobic chants are now common in bars, taxis and other public places.
But more interestingly is the use of social networking websites such as Facebook, mixit and twitter to spread hate messages and xenophobia.
These threats seem to be now directed even at white foreigners from Europe, America and Asians. After South Africas loss in the World Cup last week, Facebook pages were awash with calls to kill all foreigners including Bafana-coach Carlos Alberto Pereira.
On June 17 2010 hundreds of messages by black South African Facebook members provided considerable proof that there are widespread plans for a massive ethnic-cleansing campaign and that foreign tourists are also included in these plans.
Many black foreigners in South Africa have been warned for several months that such attacks are afoot, as they are again being threatened in the same organised manner like the ones that broke out in May 2008 which displaced hundreds of thousands of foreign blacks and killed hundred, when the often large youth gangs roamed the townships and torched these people inside their homes if they didnt flee fast enough.
One Witwatersrand student, Sanele Nene, wrote on June 17 2010 on Facebook: Its time to start our xenophobic attacks on every foreigner in this country, the World Cup is over for us so they must voetsek
Voetsek is an Afrikaans word often used to chase away dogs.
Many others, such as Khavi Mavodze also write: foreigners leave our country, be warned, xenophobia is our first name while Joshua Irwin writes, let the xenophobia commence, bloody agents Uruguayans, I am gonna set Malema on your asses.
Uruguay beat Bafana 3 0 last week in Pretoria in a match that effectively killed off any hopes of the host team advancing to the next round.
In addition Mavodze wrote, The World Cup is over please foreigners leave our country and take your brother Perreira along, we dont care even if his bank account is loaded with South African money.
Gibongiwe Shange wrote that hes at a construction site with Zimbabweans and they are worried about xenophobic attacks on 12 July, since South Africa lost last night, say South Africans will take out their anger on them.
With such messages increasing by the day on the social networking sites, Kwazulu Natal University Professor, Patrick Bond believes foreigners nationals have every reason to be worried.
The threats are real, said Bond.
Although for now these threats have remained very much mute, many foreign nationals believe locals shall carry them out soon after the World Cup.
But while this is happening more Zimbabweans continue to stream into South Africa.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says Zimbabweans top the list of people seeking asylum abroad with its latest statistics showing that 158200 Zimbabweans sought asylum in South Africa last year fleeing political and economic turmoil and uncertainties over a fragile coalition government.
By comparison, about 48600 people from Myanmar, also known as Burma, applied for asylum. They were followed by about 39000 Afghans, 39200 Colombians and 37900 Somalis.
Meanwhile Zimbabweans who were among the worst affected by xenophobic violence in 2007 are not taking chances with many of them making plans to leave South Africa sooner rather than later.
I am not taking any chances this time around, I have gone through this and at the end of the month I am going back home and wait to see what happens, said Maxwell Rukovo of Tembisa, a car mechanic who witnessed the xenophobic violence in 2007. The South African government has since put in place a committee to look into these threats and come up with a preventive measure.
Post published in: News