* * *

STOP PRESS: Read the memorandum and pledge delivered by the thousands who marched against xenophobia in Johannesburg on May 24, and the statement of the Anti-Privatisation Forum following the successful march.

See also ``Xenophobia tears apart South Africa's working class'' by Thandokuhle Manzi and Patrick Bond.

Watch South Africa: The New Apartheid, on the South African government's treatment of migrant workers and refugees and the involvement of racist white farmers.

* * *

May 21, 2008 -- According to the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, as of May 19, 2008, the death toll in a wave of attacks targeting foreigners around South Africa's main city of Johannesburg has risen to at least 32, with an estimated 6000 people seeking shelter in police stations, churches and community halls. The violence has spread to Zandspruit, northwest of Johannesburg, and Tembisa, Primrose, Reiger Park and Thokoza, on the eastern perimeter of the city, as well as other working-class communities.

Thousands in Johannesburg protest against xenophobia, May 24, 2008 (more here and here and here). More coverage in Comments below.

South African newspapers ran horrific images of people set alight by angry mobs, who roamed townships during the weekend looking for foreigners and looting their shops and homes. In the Troyville area, just east of the central business district and historically a migrant enclave, shops were closed and the usually busy streets were quiet. An estimated 2000 people had taken refuge in the nearby Jeppe Street police station after violence at the weekend.

President Thabo Mbeki announced on May 18 that a panel had been set up to investigate the attacks, but the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), a constitutionally mandated watchdog, accused the government of failing to take the threat of xenophobia seriously.

Below are some of the responses by South Africa's left organisations and trade unions. More will be posted as they become available.

* * *

Anti-Privatisation Forum:

AWAY WITH HATRED AND FEAR!

DOWN WITH XENOPHOBIA!

THE ENEMIES OF THE POOR IN SOUTH AFRICA ARE NOT THE POOR FROM OTHER COUNTRIES.

LET US FIGHT TOGETHER AGAINST A CAPITALIST SYSTEM THAT KEEPS US ALL IN POVERTY.

It is a sad day for South Africa when we see our brothers and sisters from other countries being attacked, killed and injured in our communities and streets. This is not the kind of South Africa we want. We want a country where everyone can enjoy our hard-won freedoms, where everyone has a job, a decent place to live and where we do not have to struggle for the basic necessities of life. That is the kind of South Africa we fought so hard for and we must continue to fight for. We must not allow ourselves to become full of hatred and anger against those from other countries who live in our communities and who are also poor and fighting for the same things. They are not to blame for our problems.

The poverty that we continue to experience 14 years after our independence is caused by a capitalist system that wants to keep us poor. The reason why so many of us have no jobs is because our government has adopted policies that favour the rich. It is not our brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe, or Mozambique or anywhere else that are responsible for us living in shacks, that are responsible for our lack of adequate water and electricity. It is the policies of GEAR [neoliberal macroeconomic policy of the African National Congress -- ANC], corrupt councillors, greedy capitalists and an ANC government that has forgotten the poor. The poor from other countries that now live with us here in South Africa are escaping the same kind of oppression, corruption and greed. The poor, wherever they are, are being exploited and oppressed by the same capitalist class.

Blaming and attacking immigrants will not solve anything – it will only create further anger and conflict within poor communities. The only ones who will benefit are those who continue to feed off the desperation and poverty of the poor. It is clear that the recent attacks are the work of a small minority who want to take advantage of the anger and frustration is our communities to help themselves and make enemies out of those who are our fellow brothers and sisters in struggle. We must come together as communities and put a stop to this NOW!

We cannot, and must not, allow ourselves to be manipulated to support actions which make our communities to live in fear. We must organise and defend our communities and everyone who lives in them from those who want to tear us apart through hatred and greed. We cannot rely on the government and police to serve us and protect the poor – whether South African or immigrant - as they should be doing. We must come together as communities - whether we are ANC members, workers, civic activists, church-goers, youth – and show that we have the collective will and power to defeat those who would make us all live in fear and create division and hatred amongst ourselves. Let us all stand up together and fight the real enemies of poverty and desperation.

For further information/comment contact APF Organiser – Silumko Radebe on 072 173-7268 or at the APF office on 011 333-8334

FORWARD TO THE UNITY OF THE OPPRESSED!

* * *

Johannesburg, May 24, 2008.

South African Communist Party: Back to basics: Rebuild organisation, defeat patronage and corruption, to defeat the scourge of xenophobia

By Blade Nzimande, South African Communist Party general secretary

May 21, 2008 -- The current wave of xenophobic attacks must be strongly condemned by all South Africans. So has the SACP expressed its strongest condemnation of these attacks. Not only are these attacks barbaric and inhumane, but this is a hugely embarrassing spectacle for South Africans, both domestically and internationally. This is especially so for those of us who have been such a huge beneficiary of international solidarity. Perhaps that is one of the aims of the clearly planned barbaric attacks on our African working class and poor brothers and sisters, to undermine the international prestige of South Africa and its peoples.

It is not enough merely to express our strongest possible condemnations; we need to take strong and visible action both in the short and medium term. One of the immediate short-term measures must be strong law enforcement as well as preventative legal measures in order to urgently contain the situation.

However, safety and security measures on their own are not adequate.

Our organisations, especially alliance and progressive community formations, need to urgently engage communities in affected areas and beyond in order to isolate and deal with those behind these barbaric actions. Indeed, the SACP has instructed its provincial structures to do just that. Our senior leadership will join forces with provincial structures to ensure this engagement is effective.

We should treat these developments as a wakeup call for all our formations, including the state security structures. These developments call for very serious self-reflection, criticism and self-criticism. How does it happen that none of our political or community structures knew about such serious plans to attack “foreigners”? How come the state intelligence structures were also caught unaware? Not only that, even after the eruptions in Alexandra, and the prior events in Tshwane and parts of the Western Cape, why were we not able to prevent these xenophobic acts, and then stop them spreading to Ekurhuleni and other parts of Johannesburg?

To answer these questions, we have to look at some of the underlying causes for xenophobia and its current violent expressions.

Intra-poor struggles:

The failures of structural adjustment programmes and predatory capitalism

As we have argued in previous editions, the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAPs) imposed on virtually the whole of the Southern African region by the IMF since the 1980s, have been an unmitigated failure. Not only did they fail in their promise to improve the lives of the people of our country, but in many instances they even rolled back some of the positive gains that a lot of our countries had made since independence (including gains around access to food and basic services, education and health).

Since 1994, many of the displaced workers and peasants of our region, as well as professionals, have been migrating (legally and illegally) to a democratic South Africa, mostly as economic refugees seeking better opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.

Despite the many modest gains that our own democracy has made since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, our own self-imposed structural adjustment programme, GEAR, failed to make a dent in unemployment (unemployment actually increased dramatically between 1996 and 2006), and eroded the capacity to build a developmental state. It instead became welfarist, with now more than 12 million people relying on social grants of some sort.

The political and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe has put more pressure on South Africa to absorb even more economic refugees from that country, as well as from many other countries.

The net effect of the above developments has been that it has been the poor of South Africa who have had to absorb the poor from our region.

This has happened in two ways. Firstly, it is the poor communities in the informal settlements that have had to share their space and minimal resources with the poor from our region. The bourgeoisie and the middle classes have been shielded from the responsibility of carrying the burden of the failure of the ESAPs in our region and the crisis particularly in Zimbabwe, and they are literally shielded behind their high walls in the leafy suburbs. Elites from other countries in our region are also not bearing the brunt of this economic (and political) meltdown.

Secondly, there has been a rapid regionalisation of South Africa`s labour force, especially over the last 8 to 10 years, with an increasing transformation of the division of labour in some of the key sectors of our economy. South Africa’s capitalist class has fully exploited the vulnerability of workers from the rest of our SADC region, more often at the direct expense of South African workers, by paying them slave wages and subjecting them to working conditions that are at variance with South Africa’s labour market regime.

These realities have also not been helped - in fact, they may have been worsened - by the predatory rather than development role of South African private capital in our region. Many South African companies investing in the rest of the continent have fully exploited weak labour market regimes in the region to maximise their profits and are contributing very little to the broader developmental agenda in the region.

It is therefore not the poor from our Southern African region who are stealing the jobs and sustainable livelihoods of South Africa’s workers and the poor, but the predatory practices of the capitalist class, both in South Africa and in the African continent.

The lesson from this is that any notion of an “African renaissance” not accompanied by radical economic policies to change the conditions of the workers and the poor, including challenging the predatory practices of capitalism in the continent, is nothing else but the new and modern opium for the people - a “feel-good” attitude, with no accompanying transformatory measures!

The political economy of our local state

The current violence is also a reflection of the contradictory reality of advances and setbacks in our own local government system. Since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, our government has indeed provided many crucial local services and transformed the undemocratic nature of local government that we inherited from apartheid.

However, these advances have been mediated, and threatened, by the simultaneous new patronage and corrupt practices that have not only engulfed local government, but also the national and provincial government levels.

Whilst most of our councillors are doing great work in their service to our communities, a significant section of our ANC councillors have become so corrupt that their behaviour seriously threatens to undo the many gains we have made since our 1994 democratic breakthrough. For instance, why are housing allocations done by councillors instead of being collectively approved by our municipal councils and management?

How come in some areas, councillors directly select people to be employed in municipal infrastructural projects? In many of our areas, such councillors are not accounting to the ward committees and municipal councils, and are thus not representing the interests of our people. They have become nothing more than “indunas” in their wards, with many of the ward committees being nothing but “induna-controlled committees”. We have to confront the fact that many such practices take place in ANC-controlled wards. Some of our own councillors illegally take bribes and allocate `RDP houses` to undeserving people who are both South African and non-South African citizens! These corrupt practices create fertile ground for intra-community conflict and xenophobia, exploited by reactionary and anti-ANC local elites bent on achieving their own narrow political goals.

Johannesburg, May 24, 2008.

Our main criticism of the ANC prior to the ANC`s 52nd Polokwane Conference has been that it has been captured by what we have called the “1996 Class Project”, which is an alliance between sections of domestic and global capital, emergent black sections of the (petty) bourgeoisie, mediated by sections of our own cadres occupying key positions within the state. One of the critical outcomes of this has been the demobilisation of the ANC branches and the “colonisation” of the ANC by state structures. This has turned the ANC into nothing more than an electoral party, divorced from the day-to-day struggles of the overwhelming majority of its members and various constituencies.

The current violence against “foreigners” is one particular expression of the weakening and “near-decay” of the structures of the ANC on the ground, and their inability to lead progressive community struggles and failure to detect reactionary plans against our African brothers and sisters.

These events do not only expose an ANC that is incapable of mobilising communities outside of election campaigns, but also a seriously weak SACP. The weakness of the SACP on the ground is a reflection of the combined effect of the extent to which the 1996 class project marginalised SACP and alliance structures in general and the extent to which a number of our SACP structures were actually co-opted by, and actively collaborated with, the 1996 class project dominant within the ANC and the state. This happened in a number of areas in the country.

All these features of the politics and economics of South Africa’s locality have contributed significantly towards the weakening of our organisational structures.

Counter-revolution

It is clear that given the pattern, planning and timing of these violent attacks, there is a counter-revolutionary agenda, with an eye towards discrediting the ANC and influencing next year’s national elections. This is a well-orchestrated campaign, exploiting the very real frustrations of the poor in our country.

It is indeed possible that these counter-revolutionary forces are exploiting what they see as “divisions” within the ANC and the relative uncertainty of this transitional period between the ANC’s Polokwane Conference and the 2009 elections. It might also be a test of the strength, resilience and capacity of both the ANC and the state to withstand such pressure.

A fundamental question that we have to answer is to what extent we have succeeded in demobilising the counter-revolutionary forces of the 1980s into the early 1990s, and in changing the social conditions of our people that were exploited by these forces at the time? The current wave of violence has all the hallmarks of the violence of the early 1990s, particularly in Gauteng.

Like in the early 1990s, hostels seem to be the main platform from which the current violence is being planned and unleashed.

The urgency of dealing with this situation should also be informed by the fact that there is a real danger that this violence can quickly be transformed into ethnic violence amongst South Africans themselves.

It may therefore be appropriate to consider this violence not just as xenophobia, but as a counter-revolutionary offensive aimed at our movement and at undermining all we have achieved through our democracy.

What is to be done?

Immediate action is required by the security forces to clamp down hard on the violence, with a particular focus on arresting and punishing the perpetrators. It is also of utmost importance for our communities to co-operate with the police in apprehending the perpetrators.

Of particular importance is that out of this tragedy there is perhaps an opportunity to frankly and honestly assess the state of our organisations, identifying some of the decay that was beginning to creep in, and begin a serious process of rebuilding our branch structures throughout the country.

In rebuilding our organisations, it is important also to pose the question of what kind of community structures and organisations we want to foster in our communities. For instance, is the task to rebuild SANCO or to build strong street committees as the new revolutionary nucleus for community organisation, or both?

Whichever way we answer this question, it is important to focus on the building of street committees as a new opportunity to organise and mobilise our communities to fight crime and for these also to be the new revolutionary nuclei around which to pursue our developmental agenda in the locality.

It is also important that organisation of casual and other vulnerable workers is intensified. This must include a deliberate strategy to ensure that all workers from the region are organised into unions.

This will lay a stronger basis for fighting against those employers exploiting the vulnerability of those workers from the rest of our region, and will help to build working class solidarity in the workplace and beyond.

Asikhulume!!

From Umsebenzi Online, Volume 7, No. 8, 21 May 2008

* * *

COSATU appeal to workers: Say no to xenophobia

Everybody in our country knows, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been at the forefront of the campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty. For years we have fought to ensure that this struggle is
taken seriously and remains at the centre of the national agenda. COSATU has done everything in its power to give a voice to the voiceless and speak out against the intolerable levels of unemployment and poverty in
South Africa, and to explain the historical reasons for them and the policies we need to deal with the problem.

It is therefore shocking and disturbing to see that some workers and residents of poor communities believe that these problems are caused by foreign nationals and that they are attacking, robbing and killing those
foreigners they believe to be responsible, who are themselves victims of the same unemployment, poverty and crime.

They are totally wrong. The problems they face are rooted in years of apartheid which kept the majority of South Africans in desperate poverty and denied them any democratic means to improve their plight. Those problems persist today. The real level of unemployment, including those who have given up the attempt to find work is still over 35%. This means that around eight million are jobless. There are certainly not that
number of employed foreign immigrants. Even if they were all to leave tomorrow, the levels of unemployment would remain about the same, and so would the extent of poverty which afflicts at least half our population.

The same applies to crime. Criminals have been at work in South Africa for years -- robbing, murdering and raping – not just since the recent influx of immigrants. There can be no possible excuse for people who claim to be fighting crime to use exactly the same methods as the criminals against foreign immigrants.

Many of the pioneers of the South African trade unions were migrant workers from all over Southern Africa. Many of them led our movement in its early days. We have always insisted that human rights are not just for South Africans but for all people, regardless of where they have come from. We must stand together to defend the rights that our constitution and laws give to all those living within our boundaries.

If people are made scapegoats simply on the basis of their country of origin we will be on a slippery slope towards regionalism and tribalism and the destruction of the unity we have built in the trade unions and civil society organisations.

The only people who will gain from such disunity will be the people we should be blaming for our problems -- unscrupulous employers on the farms, in security firms and other sectors, who are exploiting desperate foreign workers by employing them on lower wages and benefits than they could get away with paying South African workers.

COSATU and its affiliates are fighting a daily battle to force such employers to comply with fair labour standards. We must place the blame on their shoulders, not those of their desperate, exploited workers, and
present a united front in the battle to win minimum standards of pay, benefits and health and safety protection for all workers.

The same applies in the communities. To achieve faster delivery of services we need strong, united civic movements. Attacking foreigners will not build new houses, but working together as communities is essential if we want to transform the environment where we live.

We must also unite to solve the problems of poverty and underdevelopment here in South Africa and throughout the region, so that workers are no longer driven to other countries to find work and food.

An injury to one is an injury to all!

Workers of the world unite!

* * *

The militant Durban shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo responds to the xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg

sekwanele

http://www.abahlali.org

* * *

Social Movements Indaba: March against xenophobia and hate -- `Our struggle knows no borders!'

May 21, 2008 -- The Social Movements Indaba (SMI) is mobilising social movements, immigrant communities, NGOs, unions, concerned residents from poor areas around the province for a march this Saturday, 24th of May. The march will gather at Pieter Roos Park (Empire and Hospital Road) from 9 am, proceed through Hillbrow and stop at the Departments of Home Affairs and Housing before ending at the Library Gardens. The message marchers will be conveying is that our struggle is common and knows no borders. Everyone who wants to make their voices heard should join us – our struggle knows no borders.

The Social Movements Indaba -– a co-ordinating national body of social movements, civil society and activist organisations –- is organising with its affiliated organisations and immigrant communities to roll back the groundswell of xenophobia. In the years since its formation in 2002, the SMI has linked organisations of the poor in struggle for basic services, international solidarity and against police repression. At its last national meeting in December in Cape Town, the SMI identified xenophobia as a pervasive problem in communities and undertook to campaign against hatred of foreigners. Now that the crisis of hate crime is no longer foreboding and is terrifyingly HERE, there is no time to stall and wish we were better prepared. We are without hesitation committed to the struggles for social justice, internationalism and solidarity with all repressed people.

While the police have been deployed to try keep a lid on the pressure that has boiled over, this is no solution to the safety and security of all. As a xenophobic force in Johannesburg pre-existing the outbreak of violence, the police cannot be trusted to be more than the brute barrier between perpetrators and their targeted victims. The South African Police Services and Johannesburg Metro Police harass immigrants to solicit bribes as a matter of practice. Calling on the police to ``do their work'' as President Thabo Mbeki and his [African National Congress] government have done does not, therefore, address the issues of safety and security amongst immigrant communities. The refugee communities do not trust the police as impartial arbiters of the conflict. The police conducted a brutal raid on the Central Methodist Church on the 31st of January 2008 under the pretext of crime prevention. Criminalisation of immigrants is a smokescreen for deportation and bribery that the police has not cleared.

Misdirected anger

Long-lasting safety and security for all does not include deportation of foreign nationals, whether voluntary or not. Xenophobia's origins lie within the conditions of poverty in which the majority of South Africans live. Immigrants have been targeted for their ethnic difference and for their very similarity with their persecutors. Seen as competitors for scarce jobs and housing, South Africans have misdirected their anger at conditions of poverty that are unchanging. Their fellow brothers and sisters who are enduring the same cannot be responsible for what the economic and political system has created.

While we struggle for a change to the neoliberal capitalist system that has created this reality, rearguard struggles for safety and security of immigrants in the country must continue. The SMI gives thanks for those humanitarian organisations, emergency services and churches that are trying to stem the tide of bloodletting and forced removals. We will organise against the creation of refugee camps and work towards the reintegration of immigrants in our communities. In working to recover our common humanity and restore calm, delegations from the SMI are meeting with community-based organisations in Alexandra and the inner city, and as the programme of action to roll-back the hate unfolds, the SMI will be going further afield to speak to affected communities.

No one is illegal

For directions or other enquiries, please contact the Anti Privatisation Forum on 011 333 8334.

For comment, please contact: Silumko Radebe (APF) 0721737268; Mhlobo Gunguluzi (Khanya College) 0843773013; Brian Burayai (Refugee Fellowship) 0732865667

The Social Movements Indaba includes amongst other organisations: the Anti Privatisation Forum, Jubilee South Africa, Imbawula Trust, Sounds of Edutainment, Umzabalazo we Jubilee, Lesbian and Gay Equality Project, Inner City Resource Centre, Kliptown Concerned Residents, Khanya College, Earthlife Africa (Johannesburg), Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Golden Triangle Crisis Committee, Samancor Retrenched Workers Crisis Committee, African Renaissance Civic Movement, Group of Refugees Without Voice

SANCO, Thokoza Branch: March in Thokoza

The Thokoza branch of SANCO [South African National Civics Organisation], with allied community organisations, is inviting you to a press conference to announce its planned march to express disgust at inhuman xenophobic attacks on Africans from the North.

We are marching because these diabolic xenophobic attacks reverse all revolutionary gains we made since 1994. It reverses the internationalist role of, and impact of, our struggle against apartheid.

The Cubans in Cuito Cuinavale, Angola, laid down their lives for no

economic gain but to express solidarity with South Africans, Angolans, Namibians and love for humanity. The South African revolution and our new democracy is the product of sacrifices by ordinary people of Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia and Tanzania. These countries were attacked by the South African apartheid army because South Africans stayed and lived amongst their people. Therefore we condemn the attacks on our African brothers and sisters merely because they are not South Africans.

As far back as the 1950s and 1960s, Africans from all these countries, including Malawi and Kenya, died in South African mines. Others went back to their countries sick and poor; while on the other hand our economy, though under apartheid, grew in leaps and bounds.

For more information please contact: Moloantoa Molaba 082 455 3070, or e-mail moloantoa@nehawu.org.za

Nzipho 084 880 4725

Bongani 083 352 6920

* * *

National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa: Stop the violence! Let's focus on the real problem!

As at today, May 20, more than 20 people are dead, hundreds have been injured and thousands are homeless after the latest xenophobic attacks in the Gauteng province. Those that attacked these people say they were getting

rid of aliens and criminals who are stealing their jobs, their wives and their possessions.

But those that attacked

* gave victims no chance to defend themselves

* in some cases raped those they attacked

* in some cases stole from those they attacked

* burnt homes of those they attacked

* killed South Africans as well as ``aliens''.

Let's ask ourselves, who are the real criminals in these attacks?

Even if every so-called ``amakwerekwere'' left this country, we would still have unemployment. You just need to look at your workplace to see why. Capitalists are always trying to find ways of reducing their costs -- they outsource certain jobs, they put people on short term contracts, they close down certain sections of the company. And sometimes the company can't compete anymore and it closes down, forcing everyone onto the streets.

Fighting against our fellow workers is no way to change this. Only strong organisation can change the system that we currently live in.

First let's help the police root out criminals:

* work with the police and your community policing forum to restore law and order

* report criminals who cause instability

* protect women and children from assault and rape

* prevent armed gangs from looting and burning shops and homes.

And let's unite with our class, regardless of what language they speak or where they come from.

Let's unite against those who exploit us. We all want liberation from economic exploitation and a better life!

Stop the violence! Stop the looting!

Stop the raping! Stop the killing!

Build a caring society!

Issued by Numsa PO Box 260483 Excom 2023; May 20 2008

National Union of Mineworkers calls for serious state intervention on xenophobic attacks

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) calls on the state to urgently intervene in the deteriorating and escalating levels of xenophobic attacks in the country.

``The state should deploy the army to curb the terrible situation in which poor immigrants and local residents to some extent find themselves'', says Oupa Komane, the NUM's Deputy General Secretary.

``We believe the situation is characterized by high levels of criminality and hooliganism and therefore calls for the state to be

high handed'', says Komane. ``Many members of the NUM come from neighboring countries such as Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Swaziland and others. We therefore cannot allow the situation to be polarised further'', he says.

The NUM is disturbed that immigrants continue to be attacked, their belongings looted with little action from the security authorities. ``The government must send a strong unambiguous message to the hooligans who perpetrate this action by deploying the army to deal with them. We cannot beat about the bush when foreigners find themselves between a rock and a hard place'', says Komane.

The NUM has already lost two members at ERPM in Primrose with three having been admitted in hospital. ``We fear that this situation will deteriorate into ethnic clashes as our local people from Venda have also received threats'', he says.

Oupa Komane (NUM Deputy General Secretary)- 082 883 7292

Lesiba Seshoka (NUM spokesperson) – 082 803 6719

* * *

Treatment Action Campaign: Government must take decisive action to stop violence

May 19, 2008

Issued by TAC National Council:
Treatment Action Campaign
http://www.tac.org.za

The Treatment Action Campaign condemns the wave of xenophobic violence sweeping through communities in Gauteng. We call on Government to take action to halt the violence; to put in place a national strategy to protect the safety, health and well being of victims of xenophobic attacks and to take steps to prevent the violence from spreading further. With the violence now having spread to almost a dozen communities in and around Johannesburg and threats of violence issued elsewhere across the country, including Cape Town, we demand more effective action from Government to deal with the crisis.

Specifically we ask government to:

* Call together all political parties, President Mbeki and all political party leaders to
visit sites of violence and to condemn it in the strongest terms.
* Draft contingency plans, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, to manage
the violence and its after-effects should it spread to other areas of the country.
While we sincerely hope that the violence will be contained and halted in
Gauteng, we urge every municipality to put in place coherent strategies for
dealing with possible outbreaks of xenophobic violence.
* Designate and make available places of sanctuary for victims of xenophobic
attacks. The current system whereby victims take shelter at police stations is
unsustainable; Government must identify sites where large numbers of people
can be comfortably accommodated and easily protected.
* Distribute emergency social assistance packages to all displaced persons.
* Initiate a sustained media campaign condemning the violence. We ask for our
political leaders to be more visible and to go on radio and television condemning
the attacks.

TAC reluctantly calls for the deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to assist the police services in curbing the violence. Although this brings back terrible memories of the Apartheid era, the police services do not have the capacity to stop the violence without the support of the SANDF. Ending violence and restoring dignity to refugees, immigrants and undocumented migrants is not only the task of government. All civil society organizations, charities, humanitarian bodies and NGOs must establish a unified and coordinated response to this national humanitarian emergency. TAC is working with the AIDS Law project, Lawyers for Human Rights, Legal Resources Centre, and other organisations to address the crisis.

Equal Treatment Issue 25 (June 2008) has been published. This edition of ET focuses specifically on the needs of refugees in Souh Africa, you can download an electronic copy at: http://www.tac.org.za/community/files/file/et25.pdf

Xenophobia is rife in South Africa. However, repression of immigrants, refugees and undocumented people goes beyond naked violence in poor communities. Earlier this year, police raided the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, beating up and arresting immigrants, mainly from Zimbabwe. The state systematically abuses the rights of immigrants: health workers deny treatment, home affairs officials demand bribes and police assault immigrants regularly. Then there are institutions like Lindela, where people are incarcerated in ghastly conditions before being deported despite not having committed any crime. This all goes on while the South African government refuses to recognise that people fleeing from Zimbabwe are refugees.

This issue of Equal Treatment contains a special report on the systematic abuse of the rights of immigrants. We hope that it galvanises South Africans to stand up against xenophobia, both by the state and in our communities.

* * *

National Education Health and Allied Workers Union: Condemn Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

ONGOING XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS

Nehawu joins all progressive minded South Africans and ordinary people in expressing their disgust at the current attacks against African brothers and sisters from the North. What is happening in Alexandra is completely unjustifiable, immoral and short sighted.

POVERTY UNEMPLOYMENT AND SLOW SERVICE DELIVERY

More than 40% of South Africans are unemployed. With the rise of food prices, petrol and the unending waiting list for RDP houses, more and more South Africans, particularly the working poor, are getting frustrated and angry. Given this anger and frustration it is easy for both legal and illegal immigrants to be used as scapegoats to explain some of the problems in our local communities. What's happening in Alexandra, previously happened in Attredgville, Khayaletsha and some of the Eastern Cape Townships. Attacks on immigrants reflect the frustration and misdirected anger we have referred to.

INTERNATIONALISM AND NEW SOUTH AFRICA

South African liberation is primarily a product of struggles led by South Africans to liberate themselves from the Apartheid system. However, international solidarity is one central pillar in our victory against Apartheid. Cubans flew 1000s of kilometers from their home to contribute to the liberation of Namibia and South Africa. They contributed to defending Angola and Mozambique.

Chris Hani stayed in Lesotho at some point during struggle against Apartheid. ANC Head quarters and Umkhonto We Sizwe camps were in Tanzania, Zambia and Angola. Many cadres stayed and studied in almost all African countries, particularly in the Southern African Countries.

In a nutshell, the victory of South African liberation is owed to Cubans, Namibians Zimbabweans, Angolans, people from Lesotho, and other Africans. Therefore there is no way we can justify the current attacks of other Africans.

As we speak today we have more than 100 Cuban doctors working in South African rural areas where South African doctors are unwilling to serve. We have hundreds of South Africa students studying in Cuba.

We call on ANC Alliance and all democratic forces in Alexandra and other affected communities to go on a massive visible and urgent campaign to educate our people that their misery is in part caused by capitalism, the impact of neo-liberal GEAR and the growing inequalities in society -- not Africans from the north. Our people must be made to understand sacrifices Cubans and other Africans made to our liberation. We unreservedly apologies to the victims of these xenophobic attacks and for the pain and damaged caused to their lives.

This statement was issued by the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) Communications Department on 15 May 2008. For further information, visit NEHAWU website: www.nehawu.org.za.