200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

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Hawdian
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200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by Hawdian »

This week alone 20 Somali shops have been looted in Pretoria alone. Other attacks targeted Indians and Pakistani shops also. The Bantus are desperate, hungry and angry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/world ... d=all&_r=0

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PICTURE: Abdugadish Mohamed, left, a 28-year-old Somali, recently returned to the shop he runs outside Cape Town after it was looted in a wave of anti-immigrant violence.

WALLACEDENE, South Africa — Abdugadish Mohamed stood just inside the doorway of the one-room shop he runs in this tense, smoky township outside Cape Town. He peered warily at the surrounding grid of dirt paths and ramshackle homes.

“We are scared, man,” said Mr. Mohamed, 28, a Somali and the manager of the Bafana Bafana Cash Store. “These people are dangerous.”

Mr. Mohamed and his two workers — both of whom are Zimbabwean refugees — had been chased from the township, and their shop looted to the walls, a little over a month earlier. They had been back for only a week. Their first job had been to build a metal protective cage around the cash till.

“This place, it can change in an instant,” said Allen Gonese, 29, one of the Zimbabwean workers. “They say it is because they hate the foreigners, because of xenophobia, but really, it is just an excuse for stealing.”

A fresh wave of violence aimed at foreign citizens living here and in several other poor black communities outside Cape Town has raised new fears among residents, community leaders and advocates for poor refugees.

Some 200 Somali shops and an unknown number of others run by Chinese immigrants, Zimbabweans and others have been looted and sometimes burned to the concrete foundations in recent months, said Braam Hanekom, director of a Cape Town-based activist group called People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty.

What set off the latest violence is unclear, but Mr. Hanekom and others say the government has cracked down on refugees recently, including by increasing deportations and closing refugee offices in some cities that are essential for foreigners to get their papers renewed.

So far, the violence against immigrants has been nowhere near the levels of the wave that swept through the country’s poorest communities in 2008, when at least 60 people were killed and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes and businesses.

And another thing that is different this time around is that several communities have responded to the violence with high-profile campaigns to welcome back those who had been chased away.

Attacks on foreigners living in Masiphumelele township, on the Cape peninsula south of the city, for instance, were quickly followed with an effort by community leaders to urge them to return. Most did go back, local leaders said, which attracted a congratulatory visit from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

In the Mandela Park section of Imizamo Yethu township, also on the peninsula, a brief burst of violence followed rumors several weeks ago that some Malawians living there had been responsible for the rape of a local girl.

“It was not true,” said Kenny Tokwe, a local community development worker, “but already the people had taken action.”

The Malawi men were chased away, as were some Somali shopkeepers.

“Almost all of the Somalis are back now, as far as I know,” Mr. Tokwe said.

Yet a certain uneasiness remains even among those who have come out of hiding.

“The reality is that the communities really need these shops,” Mr. Hanekom said. “It’s not nice having to walk a half mile to buy your loaf of bread. So yes, there have been some welcoming back, and there have been some heartwarming stories. But it would be wrong to be too optimistic.”

Once the shops are reopened and restocked, they could provide a tempting excuse, he said, for a fresh wave of looting, should something happen to set it off.

And there is, indeed, something else worrying residents and others, something even immigrant advocates hesitate to speak about. In 2010, the country was unnerved by rumors that more xenophobic violence would follow the final game of soccer’s World Cup, which South Africa was hosting. And there was some violence, though nothing like the rumors had suggested.

And now there are fresh rumors making the rounds in townships across the country that still more outbreaks of violence will be visited upon foreigners in the rush of emotions sure to follow the death of Nelson Mandela, the former president and anti-apartheid campaigner who has been hospitalized since June 8 and who turns 95 on Thursday.

“Yes, we are very concerned about that,” said Ayub Abdi, 19, an engineering student who works at his family’s shop in Mandela Park. “The customers know of this rumor, and they use it against you. If there is a dispute over some goods, they say to us, ‘Oh, you will get in a lot of trouble after Mandela dies.’ ”

Both Mr. Hanekom and William Kerfoot, a lawyer for the Legal Resource Center in Cape Town, which offers free counsel to immigrants and refugees, said that they and other advocates suspected that the rumors were baseless — “I certainly hope so,” Mr. Kerfoot said — though they might inadvertently stir trouble by providing a pretext for those needing little reason to loot.

“On the one hand, you don’t want to perpetuate the rumor,” Mr. Hanekom said. “On the other hand, you don’t want to ignore it because it has serious repercussions.”

Beverly Tsambi, 41, was in Mr. Abdi’s Mandela Park shop with her two grandchildren, looking over packets of chips.

“I don’t think it is going to happen, but the rumor is scaring people,” she said. “Maybe it will happen in other areas, but not here in Mandela Park.”

Out in Wallacedene, though, the fear is more palpable.

Mirriam Bodiba, a local official with the A.N.C. Youth League, drove slowly along the township’s cluttered and rutted streets, tracing the path the violence took here a month ago.

“Here is where it began,” she said, pointing to the sprawling, charred wreckage of a still-empty shop owned by a Chinese family. The crowds formed in the dark hours of the early morning, smashing into the shop and stealing everything, then dispersing into the labyrinth of shacks and re-forming a few blocks away at another shop, also burned. And then another, and another, dozens of them.

“The people get in the fighting mood, and they think they can attack whoever is in front of them,” she said.

About 70 people were later arrested, but it was too late.

“Oh, it will happen again,” Mr. Gonese, one of the Zimbabwean workers, said. “There will be more attacks and more lootings.”

Whether Mr. Mandela’s death, or some other spark, will set it off, he cannot predict, but he and others in the Bafana Bafana Cash Store, which is named after South Africa’s national soccer team, said they expected the violence to return.

When local leaders initiated negotiations with Somali shop owners after the violence, urging them to return, they pledged it would not happen again. Some have come back, Mr. Mohamed said, and some have not.

For his part, Mr. Mohamed returned only because “it is my job, and I must have money.” He says he has no doubt his store will be attacked again.

The sad-eyed shopkeeper kept himself just inside the doorway’s shadows, peering out at passers-by.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by Vivacious »

What are Somalis still doing there despite being robbed and killed every single day by these horrible Zulus? :shock:
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by FarhanYare »

DD,
because meesha lacag badan ayee each year qabtaan. Most of the shop owners are qurbo joog who employ cheap workforce from somalia :x . anywayz who cares hala loot gareeyo
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by Vivacious »

faraaxoos1 wrote:DD,
because meesha lacag badan ayee each year qabtaan. Most of the shop owners are qurbo joog who employ cheap workforce from somalia :x . anywayz who cares hala loot gareeyo
Looool @ hala loot gareeyo.
Money or life?
It wouldn't take me a day to pack my belongings and leave. :lol:
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by AhlulbaytSoldier »

Somalis are stubborn.
South africans will give up. They think somalis will run away after few years of robbing and killing.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by original dervish »

Obviously they prefer to take their chances in the townships rather than face the moryaans back home.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by AbtiiDoon »

lol there aint no goin back for the youth there. dhibka ee ku tageen ee ogyahiin. the route back aint no joke.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by FarhanYare »

DD,
in a way somalis brought this up on themselves, because they openned up malls, shops, restaurants in Black dominated naighbourhoods where poverty is rampant. Somalis failed to address this issue by having a dialogue with the community elders, government officials, and also somalis are stingy they never employ South Africans to work for them. Maybe if they started employing some south africans that could deflect this constant tension towards them :D . Yes you could argue how the hell can you trust these people with your business when they are very unpredictable and can rob, and kill at any given moment, But that is a discussion open for them as i dont see any other alternative solution to continue operating their business in south africa without the constant fear of looting, rape, killing etc.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by Hawdian »

South Africa resembles Mogadishu without the 17,000 strong mostly Ugandans troopers. No Ugandans, Mogadishu is South Africa without Indian, Pakistani and white shopper owners but every thing else.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by AbdiWahab252 »

Hawdian wrote:South Africa resembles Mogadishu without the 17,000 strong mostly Ugandans troopers. No Ugandans, Mogadishu is South Africa without Indian, Pakistani and white shopper owners but every thing else.
And SL must be Lesotho: small and unknown.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by Hawdian »

AbdiWahab252 wrote:
Hawdian wrote:South Africa resembles Mogadishu without the 17,000 strong mostly Ugandans troopers. No Ugandans, Mogadishu is South Africa without Indian, Pakistani and white shopper owners but every thing else.
And SL must be Lesotho: small and unknown.
:lol: :lol:

Maybe mate. I am not one of those people who go crazy if you criticize another part of your forgotten country wa caadi.

Just remember, you have more chance being robbed and killed in Mogadishu and Jhnsberg than any where else on earth. :clap:
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by TheblueNwhite »

I bought a bed from a shop in Suuq Bacaad owned by a guy who used to have a shop in SA. He said one day he decided to close shop and head back home.

I hope Somalis in SA learn to practice better business sense and I also hope they come to their senses and weigh in their living conditions.

There are 100' s of returnees already in the capital.
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Re: 200 Somali shops looted by South African thugs

Post by MrPrestige »

Most of them are Hutus, I don't really lose sleep over it. I would rather invest in somewhere safer like my kins did in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya
etc than South Africa. Most of those small shop owners that get robbed daily in South Africa are desperate refugees from Mogadishu and other parts
of South Somalia. They have a hard time going back to their homelands because southern Somalia was messed up by warlords and terrorists for many
years.
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