OPINION - The displacement of the Somali community from their settlement is yet another example of the xenophobia being displayed by South Africans towards their African brothers and sisters, this time on the pretext that one of the Somali tuckshop owners had a gun.
Most likely riling up the community and stirring xenophobic sentiment was the work of a South African tuckshop owner, getting rid of the competition. I’m willing to bet that if the police had expanded their operation to cover the entire settlement, they would have found far more illegal guns among the South Africans.
It is time to expose the lie that foreigners are responsible for crime in South Africa.
Sure, some of them are criminals: robbers, murderers, fraudsters and drug dealers. Just like thousands of South Africans who also commit the same crimes.
Who sells drugs in uMlazi, Inanda, KwaMashu, Chatsworth, Phoenix, Wentworth and Sydenham? Foreigners? Not on your life.
The dealers selling drugs to
local youngsters and destroying
their lives are all locals.
It appears South Africans can’t handle the competition from foreigners either in crime or in business.
By and large I have found foreigners to be hard-working and enterprising. Instead of looking for work, they are willing to hustle. In my own neighbourhood we have a man doing shoe repairs under a small gazebo, a barber and a mechanic - foreigners of three different nationalities and all working for themselves.
If South Africans can put aside their inferiority complex and jealousy, they could learn something from the foreigners and compete with them, instead of looking for the slightest excuse to loot and destroy what they have built.
V. RAMPERSAD Durban
Daily News