(MAIL & GUARDIAN SA) UDM: Reveal 'third force' information
UDM: Reveal 'third force' informationJohannesburg, South Africa
25 May 2008 01:11
The government should appoint a commission of inquiry to probe the xenophobic attacks that have claimed at least 50 lives and left thousands of people homeless, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) said on Sunday. UDM president Bantu Holomisa said there was a need for a transparent inquiry that would analyse the attacks and remove suspicions that they were "deliberate and orchestrated”.
"The key here would be to remove any kind of suspicion that this thing was unleashed deliberately and orchestrated by whoever. Ministers are already telling us there is a third force. Let them bring that evidence to the commission."
Holomisa said there was a need for the inquiry to visit countries where people had been repatriated to, and gather evidence and testimonies from victims of the attacks. Holomisa was addressing the Twelve Apostles Church in Bloemfontein to mark Africa Day.
Holomisa called on churches to constantly monitor political leaders and scrutinise the work they were doing.
He said religious leaders played a crucial role in South Africa before 1994, but were shunned by politicians after the elections.
"Immediately after that watershed moment in our history, the political leaders immediately shunned the religious leaders and disowned their role, under the pretext that they had been elected democratically to lead the country," Holomisa said.
He reiterated his call for a national convention that would allow all key players to discuss national issues.
He said the convention should look at social cohesion, economic policies, poverty and crime.
ANC leaders to visit hots spots
Meanwhile, ANC president Jacob Zuma and senior party leaders will hold programmes of engagement with communities in xenophobic hots pots across Gauteng on Sunday, the party said in a statement.
Spokesperson Tiyani Rikhotso said the party's national executive committee (NEC), which met on Friday and Saturday, agreed on a programme of engagement to stem the tide of violence and restore stability in affected communities.
The programme would involve all levels of the ANC in a decisive and concerted campaign to mobilise across society to address this crisis, Rikhotso said. - Sapa
Labels: BANTU HOLOMISA, SOUTH AFRICA, XENOPHOBIA
posted by MrK @ 6:10 AM
3 Comments:
SA claims third force stoking xenophobic attacks
by Jameson Mombe
Wednesday 21 May 2008
JOHANNESBURG – South African officials on Tuesday claimed a “third force” was stoking up xenophobic attacks that have killed 24 foreign immigrants, amid growing fears the violence could hurt the country’s rand currency, tourism sector and the economy.
A minister in the government of Gauteng province, where the attacks have taken place, said police had “concrete evidence” on the involvement of a third force and investigations were underway.
"The police now have concrete evidence of those involved in orchestrations and they are dealing with it," Sports Minister Barbara Creecy told the Gauteng provincial legislature.
Creecy, who addressed the legislature on behalf of Community Safety Minister Firoz Cachalia, did not elaborate on the nature of the third force or comment on widespread rumour in Johannesburg that some opposition political parties were fuelling the violence.
The violent attacks on foreigners started last week in the Johannesburg’s Alexandra township of the poor. By Saturday, the attacks had spread to other townships in Diepsloot, Thokoza and Tembisa leaving behind a trail of destruction and at least 10 000 immigrants without shelter after their homes were looted and brunt down.
Many of the immigrants, among them hundreds of Zimbabweans who fled their country because of political and economic turmoil there, have taken refuge in police stations, churches and government offices across Johannesburg where the Red Cross, Medicine Sans Frontiers and several other aid groups are providing assistance.
But some of the immigrants were not so lucky and were caught by the attacking mobs and burnt to death, in scenes that have shocked South Africa’s leadership while also unsettling foreign investors and partly helping to weaken the local currency.
The rand fell over 1.7 percent to 7.68 to the greenback as xenophobic attacks helped by calls from within the ruling ANC party for the ouster of President Thabo Mbeki raised the prospects of political instability to dent South Africa’s reputation as one of the safest investment destinations in Africa.
As local media reported on Tuesday that two more people were murdered the night before in the Ramaphosa shanty town east of Johannesburg, Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told the media that the attacks could hurt the sector that has seen in recent years a significant increase in arrivals from African countries.
Van Schalkwyk said: "Africans increasingly travel to South Africa as a holiday destination and these attacks have the potential to certainly impact negatively on that market if this is what people see on their screens and hear on their radios."
Tourism is a key sector that contributes around 8 percent of Gross Domestic Product to South Africa’s economy.
In addition to damaging South Africa’s reputation as a tolerant society, the xenophobic attacks are also a huge embarrassment to the country’s leadership many of who sheltered in neighbouring countries during the anti-apartheid struggle.
Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said the attacks had soiled South Africa’s good name. "It is causing great harm to South Africa's reputation and it can only be bad for our democracy," he said.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula promised a tougher response by the police to quell the attacks. He said: "We are going hard on the situation."
While the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) criticised Mbeki’s refusal to send in the army to help the police stop the violence which it said had reached crisis levels.
"President Thabo Mbeki is notoriously allergic to admitting that even the most obvious crisis is a crisis, so yet again people die because he is out of touch with reality, both here and in Zimbabwe," said Jack Bloom, the opposition party’s leader in Gauteng.
The army could be used to carry cordon and search operations, visibility patrols and guarding residential areas, said Bloom, who also called for the setting up of refugee camps for displaced foreigners.
But Gauteng Premier Mbazima Shilowa said the decision to summon help from the army should be left to senior police management on the ground and not to politicians.
"The decision to deploy the army should not be a political decision, but that of senior managers of the police, based on their assessment of the situation and required capacity," he said.
"We welcome the decision to deploy additional police in affected areas in the province. I hope this will go a long way to bringing the situation under control without having to involve the army," he added.
Mbeki, ANC leader Jacob Zuma, retired archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have all condemned the attacks against black immigrants from African countries. – ZimOnline.
I wouldn't be suprised at all if the US 'regime change' artists had gotten together with old elements of the 'third force' and the MDC to conspire to first bring down Zimbabwe, and when Thabo Mbeki wouldn't do their bidding, bring down or damage South Africa.
Who are the ringleaders in these attacks? Are random South Africans randomly attacking foreign nationals? And if so, why, and why now?
Tsvangirai has already made the connection to Zimbabwe when he blamed president Robert Mugabe for the violence in South Africa.
The MDC is a mercenary party that is capable of pretty much anything.
Spooks invoke spectre of ‘third force’
Ben Maclennan
22 May 2008
NIA boss says violence has “deliberately been unleashed and orchestrated”
CAPE TOWN (Sapa) - The recent wave of so-called xenophobic violence had been deliberately unleashed ahead of next year's general election, National Intelligence Agency director general Manala Manzini said on Thursday.
He was speaking at a Cape Town conference of African intelligence heads, as the death toll in the violence topped 40, with thousands displaced.
Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who was also at the meeting, told Sapa that while there were "pure criminal elements" at work, intelligence agencies were looking very carefully at "other sources motivating this with their own political agendas".
Manzini said that in the run-up to the 1994 democratic elections, "elements" that supported the apartheid regime had delivered weapons to hostels for use in attacking communities.
"We are beginning to see those movements taking place currently. Into hostels where people are beginning to organise and resuscitate some of those people that they have had contact with in the past.
"To provoke and encourage them to unleash violence. That we are beginning to pick up."
He said though the media had defined the violence as xenophobic, the problem was more complex than that, because South Africans of Tsonga and Venda descent had also been targeted.
"So it cannot be defined as xenophobia. Xenophobia is too limited a definition of what we are experiencing," he said.
"We believe that as South Africa prepares for another national election early next year, the so-called black on black violence that we witnessed prior to our first election in 1994 has deliberately been unleashed and orchestrated.
"Because we believe there are forces in this country and outside who continue to refuse to accept that we are capable as a people to rule and govern ourselves.
"That we are capable as Africans to set an agenda that seeks to uplift our people from the shackle of poverty visited upon us by the colonial past."
He said as South Africans consolidated their democracy, they should expect that there would be those in their midst "influenced and supported by external forces", who would always want to "push us to the back".
"The democracy project we are engaged in as a continent has meant many of our detractors have spent time and resources planning on how best to make us fail," he said.
Asked whether the intelligence community had failed by not warning of the outbreak of violence, he replied: "Absolutely not."
He said that as early as January NIA was already "giving indications of serious problems beginning to affect some of our situations, especially in Alexandra".
He said there were challenges in service delivery, and corruption, especially in the allocation of housing.
Part of the reason people took it out on foreigners was that they discovered that though they were on a waiting list for a home, a foreigner who had taken advantage of corruption in the system might be renting out as many as four homes.
"Because people sometimes do not find channels to raise their complaints, they resort to [violence]."
But he said he wanted to stress it was not a case of people simply going out to attack others.
"There was organisation... We have names of people who called meetings."
Kasrils told Sapa that the intelligence services were working flat out to assess exactly what was at the root of the violence.
He said it was known that socio-economic factors were involved, and those had to be dealt with in the long term, but at the same time there were "elements" involved in the violence.
"There are pure criminal elements at work. At the same time we are looking very carefully at other sources motivating this with their own political agendas.
"I'm not pointing to any political party as such, I don't believe that.
"But at community level, at levels of organisation, residents' organisations, we have come across some elements there who have been talking in a very anarchistic way.
"This has to be investigated, this has to be substantiated."
Asked whether the intelligence services had been caught napping by the outbreaks, he said it was one thing to know that there was a social problem based in poverty and alienation, marginalisation and frustration, and another to know when that outburst would occur.
"I must say that in this particular situation this has been very carefully concealed, some of the organised actions that are taking place in Alexandra and just these last few days in Ekurhuleni.
"It's not as though it's that simple when you've got organised groups and when they know and understand how to behave in a clandestine fashion.
"Nevertheless, I'm not making excuses. That's the nature of the challenge."
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home