Xenophobic violence kills five people in South Africa

Looted shops. Burnt buildings. Traders attacked. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has denounced "totally unacceptable" violence after xenophobic riots.

Since Sunday, five people have been killed in the Johannesburg area, the epicenter of violence, police said on Tuesday (September 3rd), which reported 189 arrests and said it had deployed reinforcements in the hotspots of the economic capital.

On Tuesday, police fired rubber bullets in the center of Johannesburg, the country's main city, to disperse hundreds of people, some armed with machetes and axes.

It has also pushed back small groups in the township of Alexandra, which adjoins the financial district of Sandton, to prevent further looting of businesses run by foreigners. "The largest number of victims are South Africans," said Police Minister Bheki Cele.

"The guys stormed out and vandalized the shops," Gavin Booldchand, a witness, told a witness in Coronationville, a poor suburb of Johannesburg where two people were killed on Tuesday. "The owner of a shop came out and fired into the crowd ... He shot a black man in the face," he added, accusing the foreigners of "taking" jobs from the South -Africains.

Recurrent xenophobic violence

The wave of violence and looting began on Sunday after the death of three people in the unexplained fire of a building in downtown Johannesburg, before spreading to other parts of the city, then to Pretoria.

South Africa, the continent's leading industrial power, is the scene of xenophobic violence, fueled by high unemployment and poverty. The violence of the last days has caused great concern in the immigrant communities of Johannesburg. "They burned everything," Kamrul Hasan, a Bangladeshi trader, said on Tuesday in front of his burned Alexandra Township business.

"I want it to stop immediately."

Hitherto silent, President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke on Tuesday afternoon to "condemn in the strongest terms" these xenophobic violence. "The attacks on foreign traders are totally unacceptable," he insisted in a video posted on Twitter, "I want it to stop immediately."

The condemnation of this violence by the South African President

I condemn the violence that has been spreading a number of our provinces in the strongest terms. I'm interested in the security cluster today to make sure that we keep a close eye on these acts of violence and find ways of stopping them. pic.twitter.com/sizZkwIyPO

"There can be no justification for a South African to attack people in other countries," insisted the president of the "rainbow nation" dreamed by his predecessor and mentor, Nelson Mandela. "Our nation is burning and bleeding," the leader of the main opposition party, Mmusi Maimane, also said at the head of the Democratic Alliance (DA).

In addition to the human toll, the three days of violence have caused significant damage. Dozens of stores have been vandalized in Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, and heavyweights suspected of being driven by burnt foreigners in KwaZulu-Natal province.

In 2015, seven people were killed during looting of foreign-owned businesses in Johannesburg and Durban. In 2008, xenophobic riots killed 62 people in the country.

With AFP