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Foreign shops looted in Atteridgeville‚ Pretoria

File Photo: This foreign owned Tuck Shop in Soweto was looted by residents after a teenager was shot by a foreign national shop owner in Snake Park. Picture: Vathuiswa Ruselo
File Photo: This foreign owned Tuck Shop in Soweto was looted by residents after a teenager was shot by a foreign national shop owner in Snake Park. Picture: Vathuiswa Ruselo

Foreign owned spaza shops in Atteridgeville‚ Pretoria West were looted on Monday night.

Atteridgeville police spokesperson Captain Bongi Msimango said at least one spaza shop had been completely emptied out.

Msimango had limited information around 10pm on Monday night because police were still on their way to the scene.

He was unable to confirm how many other stores had been looted‚ but described the situation as “serious“.

The latest incident of looting comes after community members looted stores and burned down homes of suspected drug dealers and brothels on Saturday.

Can I be African and foreign in Africa?February 27 marked the 38th anniversary of the death of the founding president of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, Mangaliso Sobukwe. 

The latest spate of anti-foreigner sentiment and violence comes in the run up to a planned march this Friday by a community organisation known as the Mamelodi Concerned Residents.

The group has circulated a flyer calling on community members to partake in the march.

“Unemployment is at 34% in South Africa but they give people asylum seeker status when there is no work in South Africa. What do they expect them to do‚” the flyer reads.

“Where must South Africans work?“

The flyer also accuses foreign residents from Nigeria‚ Zimbabwe and Pakistan of destroying Johannesburg.

On Monday‚ the Nigerian government urged the African Union to step in to stop what it said were “xenophobic attacks” on its citizens and other Africans in South Africa.

AFP reported that the Nigerian presidency said there was a need for the continental body to “intervene urgently‚” claiming that in the last two years “about 116” Nigerians had been killed‚ including 20 last year.

“This is unacceptable to the people and government of Nigeria‚” a senior presidential aide on foreign affairs‚ Abike Dabiri-Erewa‚ said in an emailed statement to AFP.

 

 

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