By Gordon Bell

CAPE TOWN, Sept 1 (Reuters). A group of Somali children laugh and play on a secluded field outside Cape Town, oblivious to the hatred and violence that have driven their parents from their homes and businesses.

Police said on Friday a South African mob attacked Somali refugees this week in Masiphumelele, a tiny black township near the quiet seaside town of Kommetjie, about 40 km (25 miles) south of the country's tourist hub, looting and torching shops and forcing scores into hiding.

Analysts say widespread poverty and a large African immigrant population has bred jealously, making Africa's biggest economy rife for xenophobia.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, jostling for limited jobs and adding to already high crime rates, have sparked distrust and hatred of legitimate refugees.

Attacks against Somalis have occurred across South Africa over the past six months and in the Cape Town region 27 citizens of the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation have been murdered in the last month alone, according to police figures.

"There is fear amongst the Somali people living in this country", 26-year-old Madith Haji Adam told Reuters, as a handful of children play ball on a campsite field nearby.

"Our property has been destroyed and our businesses are gone. Everybody is desperate, just waiting to see what will happen next", he said, his grasp of English making him a spokesman for his fellow countrymen clamouring to be heard.

Haji Adam settled in South Africa two years ago to escape civil war in his homeland, hoping for a better future in Africa's economic powerhouse, which opened its borders after the end of apartheid in 1994 to fellow Africans fleeing strife.

Others in this group of 35 people hiding from their former neighbours have lived in the region for more than a decade.

SHOPOWNERS TARGETED

The latest attacks have been directed at township "spaza" shops - small stores selling soft drinks and snacks or clothes - in which Somali businesspeople have flourished.

Local residents blame them for loss of trade, and dwindling profits, provoking mob violence and gangster-type hits.

More than a decade after the end of apartheid, the vast majority of South Africa's black population remains desperately poor, accounting for the bulk of the country's almost 30 percent official unemployment.

"Desperate people do desperate things", said Frans Cronje, analyst at the South African Institute of Race Relations. "We have seen this happen elsewhere. Foreign black Africans are targeted mainly when they are living in black communities".

Cronje said the issues are usually the same: "That they are stealing jobs from South Africans, they are stealing services from South Africans and that they are stealing South African women".

The regional Western Cape government is investigating the attacks, promising to help the total of almost 80 Somalis forced to flee to return safely to their homes.

Shielded by police and housed by local church and community groups, the immigrants fear for their future, too scared to return to their homes and what remains of their businesses.

JOHANNESBURG, 31 Aug 2006 (IRIN). A wave of violent attacks against Somali-run businesses around Cape Town is exposing tensions between poor South Africans and the millions of refugees who have flocked to the country in the hope of a better life.

Hadith Haji Adam, 26, who recently fled his war-torn country in the Horn of Africa, watched his small grocery store burned and vandalised when locals rampaged for several nights in Masiphumelele, an informal settlement near the Cape Peninsula port of Simonstown.

"All 27 shops run by Somalis in the settlement have been destroyed, many people have been injured and my shop is gone too", he said.

"Some people in the community like us, but others don't want the competition. I think some local shopowners are behind the violence against us - they organised the attacks on our businesses and now we have nothing", he alleged.

Like millions from Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries ravaged by war or grinding poverty, Haji Adam came to South Africa seeking refuge and a new start. Instead, he has found xenophobia, often fuelled by jealousy and intense competition for scarce resources.

"There is a huge problem in South Africa with racism and a dislike of foreigners, and it is only getting worse", he said. "The government says they will help us but I do not know when that help will come ... I am staying in temporary accommodation and I don't know how I can open another shop".

According to Ashraf Mohammed, Western Cape coordinator for South Africa's Human Rights Commission, "We are looking into reports that 27 Somalis have been killed in the Western Cape [Province] in the last month alone. We are not in possession of all the details of the incidents in Masiphumelele, but there is certainly a pattern that suggest xenophobia is one of the causes".

XENOPHOBIA ON THE RISE

Although South Africa is the continent's economic powerhouse, it has high unemployment - estimated at 40 percent - and a chronic lack of housing and reliable public services. Poor refugees drawn to the country often find themselves penniless in city centres, squatter camps or crime-ridden, low-income areas, where they compete with thousands of locals for scarce jobs.

In the past year, tensions among refugees and South Africans have boiled over several times, and have often mirrored the circumstances that drove the Masiphumelele attacks. Somali businesses were targeted near Johannesburg, northern Limpopo and Free State provinces, where two people were killed and 80 shops destroyed.

"Since last year xenophobic attacks in South Africa have definitely increased, and have also become more violent", said Katrina Mseme, campaign coordinator for the Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign.

"We started a campaign to educate people in 1998, and to begin to remove the strong strain of xenophobia in the country, but by 2003 that campaign had ended and we are again looking for funds", she said. "We need to educate people; we need to get out into the communities and bring church leaders and community leaders and schools together if we want to reverse the tide of xenophobia and racism".

Mseme said Somalis might find it more difficult to integrate than immigrants from countries bordering South Africa, which could explain why they and their businesses have been targeted so frequently.

Although South Africa's system of apartheid - the forced separation of people based on race - ended 12 years ago, race relations remain fraught. During apartheid communities were isolated from each other and the country was cut off from other African countries and cultures. Only a handful of the hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the country's borders to work in the diamond and gold mines were integrated into wider society.

The recent influx of foreign migrants - the home affairs department estimates there are over 7 million undocumented immigrants in the country - has coincided with a rise in internal migration as locals relocate from rural to urban areas to find employment.

Competition for jobs, fear of strangers and, in some cases, plain ignorance are believed to be the catalysts triggering violent incidents against refugees.

Lasting solutions to the problems of racism and xenophobia are proving elusive. The Western Cape provincial government said it would launch an awareness campaign and probe the attacks against the Somali community.

Mseme said a long-term national strategy with a focus on education was needed. "When I go out and ask people what a refugee is, a lot of people say to me, 'Oh, it's that guy who sells drugs on the corner, or that one who steals from us'. These are attitudes that must change, because most refugees are law-abiding and contribute to South Africa's culture and economy".

Reuters AlertNet

Integrated Regional Information Networks

Enlaces sobre Direitos Humanos