serikali ya panga kuludisha watanzania wote waliopo yemeni
je twajiuliza vipi wa Afrika ya Kusini?
Jana taarifa iliyotolewa na Wizara ya Mambo ya Nchi za Nje na Ushirikiano wa Kimataifa kuhusu kuwarejesha nyumbani Watanzania waliopo Yemen (bofya hapa kurejea), ilikuwa ya kutia moyo, matumaini na kufurahisha kuwa Serikali inawajali 'diaspora'.
Leo kuna habari isiyopendeza kusoma wala kuamini katika magazeti ya leo kuhusu Watanzania waliopo Afrika Kusini ambako mauaji dhidi ya wageni yameripotiwa katika miji mbalimbali na hali ya taharuki miongoni mwao inazidi kuongezeka kiasi cha wengine kufikiria kuchukua likizo za dharura ama kuhama kabisa nchi. Taarifa hizi ni kwa mujibu wa marafiki na jamaa walioko huko.
Tafadhali, Serikali ya Tanzania mtolee ufafanuzi hili lililochapishwa kwenye magazeti ya leo.
via THE CITIZEN -- Two Tanzanians living in South Africa have been killed in what has been linked with the ongoing xenophobic violence that rocked the country recently.
News of the deaths came as the minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Bernard Membe, announced from Oman that Tanzania had begun evacuating its nationals from Yemen that has been engulfed in a bloody war between government forces and rebels.
In South Africa, a representative of Tanzanians living in the country told The Citizen yesterday, that the two met their deaths in the anti-foreigners attacks that have left another five people from other countries dead and thousands displaced in the city of Durban.
Mr Bonka Kuseleka, a representative of the Tanzanians, named the deceased as Rashid Jumanne, a cigarette peddler who died on Tuesday in Stenga, a suburb in Durban and one Athumani alias China Mapepe, who died on Wednesday in the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.
According to Mr Kuseleka, Rashid was shot dead by unknown gunmen while peddling his merchandise while Athumani, a detainee at Westville correctional facility was stabbed to death by fellow inmates.
“As I speak to you now we are on a peaceful march with some locals in Durban to condemn these brutal killings but so far we have lost two Tanzanians here,” he told The Citizen by phone from Durban.
But in a quick rejoinder, Mr Elibahati Ngoyai Lowassa, Tanzania’s acting High Commissioner to South Africa said there was no official confirmation that the two died due to the ongoing attacks targeting foreigners.
Speaking to The Citizen from South Africa, Mr Lowassa, however, confirmed the deaths of the two Tanzanians.
According to the envoy, the High Commission was only aware of a shop belonging to a Tanzanian which was set ablaze in Durban during the chaos. Describing Rashid’s death, Mr Lowassa said he met his death after being shot at, following his suspected involvement in crime.
“What I know is that Rashid got killed through a different incident that has nothing to do with the ongoing xenophobic attacks,” maintained the diplomat.
As for Athumani, the acting High Commissioner said he was stabbed to death by fellow inmates inside the said correctional facility.
He, however, gave no details on the reasons behind Athumani’s imprisonment. But the Tanzanians who talked to The Citizen said they have information their compatriot was killed when fellow inmates confronted him over his nationality.
Mr Lowassa was categorical that his office was not planning to do any evacuation of its nationals as they were not in any danger. “Why should we undertake an evacuation when no Tanzanian has died of the attacks,” he queried.
Quoting reports from the South African government, the Tanzanian envoy told The Citizen that the attacks had so far claimed the life of one Zimbabwean, one South African and one Somali.
Newspaper reports separately reported yesterday that five people of different nationalities had been killed. South African President Mr Jacob Zuma was scheduled to address Parliament last evening over the blot that is portraying the country in the negative.
The lives of Mr Kuseleka and fellow Tanzanians eking out a living in Durban won’t be the same again, and according to him, they are now living in constant fear, unaware of their fate.
He also expressed his disappointment over what he referred to as ‘no response’ from representatives of the Tanzania High Commission, as far as the deaths of their compatriots were concerned.
“We haven’t heard a word from them, it is as if nothing has happened to us; the situation is very worrying and we’re appealing to the High Commission to come to our rescue,” said one Mr Bonka, a businessman based in Durban.
He and other Tanzanians living in this city were wondering how the High Commission was non-committal while countries of Malawi, Botswana and Zimbabwe had embarked on a mission of evacuating their nationals.
According to the website of The Guardian of South Africa, some South Africans accuse immigrants of taking jobs and opportunities away from them. The latest violence followed reported comments by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, an influential figure among the Zulu ethnic group, that foreigners should “pack their bags and leave.” The king has since appealed for an end to the unrest.
via THE GUARDIAN -- The government has said it has no plans to help Tanzanians living in South Africa to return home because of the ongoing xenophobic attacks.
The attacks on foreigners have re-emerged South African’s cities of Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg.
But based on reports, Somalia, Malawi and Zimbabwe are preparing to help their citizens escape the violence.
Interviewed by The Guardian yesterday, Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Deputy Minister, Mahadhi Juma Maalim said so far there are no reports of any Tanzanians attacks.
Maalim noted that they are aware of the attacks and the government through its High Commission in South Africa has alerted Tanzanians living there to take precautions.
“We have communicated with the High Commission officials in South Africa over the matter and directed them to alert our citizens over the possibility of being attacked. We told them to give us updates about the situation,” he stressed.
However, Maalim said that they do not have the exact number of Tanzanians living in xenophobic torn country.
This is the second time that the xenophobia attacks have emerged in South Africa after the first in 2010 – just before the World Cup that took place in African country for the first time.
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister, Bernard Membe said that the government has announced plans for Tanzanians living in Yemen to go back home due to the ongoing civil war.
Speaking before the Tanzania Ambassador to Oman, Ali Ahmed Saleh yesterday in Oman, Membe said that it is the government’s responsibility that Tanzanians living in Yemen who the majorities are students come back home safe and sound. Membe is in Oman for a one day visit to strengthen bilateral relationship between the two countries.
According to Membe, the first phase of the Tanzanians to come back home was done few days ago under Mascut Embassy offices in Oman where twenty five Tanzanians came baack home and efforts are underway to register more.
“I have given permission the usage of emergency fund in a move to make sure that our colleagues who are in danger are safe to come back home,” stressed Membe.
However, Membe underscored that the majorities of Tanzanians have already reached in Sarfat and Al-Mazyouna in Oman and Yemen border.
Tanzania Ambassador to Oman, Ali Ahmed Saleh said that following Membe’s directives, the second phase will start soon where sixty four Tanzanians will be permitted to enter Oman then come back home.
In the same vein, South Africa may no longer be safe for immigrants following violent attacks by indigenous in obedience to Zulu king's order to non-South Africans to leave the country, which resulted to the arrests of 17 people by the police.
The police have already opened murder cases after the attacks last Friday, as foreigners continue their protest against the obnoxious order by King Goodwill Zwelithini.
About 62 people have been reported dead following the monarch's order.
Xenophobia has become a recurring issue in South Africa, and many foreigners, mainly back Africans, have been hurt and killed in xenophobic attacks.
The xenophobic attacks that began in KwaZulu-Natal two weeks ago have now spread to Johannesburg.
One Zimbabwean died in the escalating xenophobic attacks in Durban, South Africa, as government yesterday set up an inter-ministerial team to facilitate the immediate return of those displaced by the attacks.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said in a statement yesterday that reports indicated that the attacks were serious and close to 800 Zimbabweans had been displaced and fled to a camp established in Chatsworth, Durban. "So far, it has been established that one Zimbabwean has died," he said.
"As a result of these reports, government decided that those Zimbabweans wishing to return home be facilitated to do so immediately.
"An inter-ministerial team has been put together at both ministerial and senior official level. The team is expeditiously putting in place the logistics as well as the resources necessary for this exercise in close liaison with the Zimbabwean High Commssioner in South Africa and his staff."
Minister Mumbengegwi said a number of Zimbabweans had expressed their wish to return home to embassy officials who visited Durban to assess the situation and discovered that it was tense. This came as South African ambassador Vusi Mavimbela said in an interview yesterday that his country lacked the capacity to deal with the flurry of xenophobic attacks targeting foreigners.
"The police, really, to be honest, if this thing spreads, the police don't have the physical capacity to be everywhere and to arrest everybody who is involved," he said.
"I know you watch South African TV you see things like service delivery protests that happen, flare up all the time in South Africa and the police have never been able to contain it.
"This xenophobic thing that is happening in South Africa you know if its spreading the police are going to be spread thin all the time and they can't be at every informal settlement."
Mavimbela said the South African government needed to come up with a holistic approach in addressing socio-economic issues and immigration laws to reduce the competition for resources between South Africans and foreigners.
He spoke as the SA government warned foreigners against retaliating.
Zimbabwean High Commissioner to South Africa Isaac Moyo said in an interview yesterday that he was yet to confirm reports of the deaths of two Zimbabweans, among them a toddler. He said over 2 000 foreigners, including Zimbabweans had been displaced.
Moyo said the embassy, with the assistance of the host government, had started documenting Zimbabweans affected by the attacks who are at Chatsworth Camp in Durban.
"We met with South Africa's Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba and the premier for Kwazulu Natal Province to get an appreciation of their plans to arrest the volatile situation and assist the victims," said Moyo.
"We are very hopeful that a solution will be arrived soon."
Moyo said the embassy was encountering challenges in cases where undocumented South African women were insisting on travelling to Zimbabwe with their husbands.
He said about 10 undocumented South African women were insisting on travelling with their husbands, while 120 Zimbabweans had left their properties under the attack of South Africans.
Moyo said the situation was dire in Durban given the cold weather persisting there and the absence of adequate tents to house the displaced people.
The Durban violence outbreak follows similar violence in Soweto where foreign shops were looted and foreigners displaced three weeks ago.
The attacks started after Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini said in a public speech that foreigners in South Africa should return to their countries and the remarks were widely viewed as having sparked the xenophobic attacks
.
In 2008, in the worst violence to date against foreigners, over a dozen people were killed -- some burnt alive through neck-lacing, a barbaric, painful slow-killing method in which a burning tyre, filled with petrol, is placed around one's neck. At the time, the then South African president Mbeki, horrified by the violence, said South Africans' heads were "bowed in shame."
In Cape Town the violence against foreign migrants living in South Africa spread to the centre of a major South African city on Tuesday as crowds reportedly numbering thousands gathered on the streets of Durban.
Reporters said police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades in an attempt to disperse the crowds. In the first signs that migrants could begin striking back at locals who have attacked them and looted their shops, they were reported to be arming themselves with baseball bats and machetes. In one area of Durban, they were reported to have tried to erect a barricade.
The state-controlled SA Broadcasting Corporation said foreign nationals retaliated when locals tried to loot their shops. A reporter for Eyewitness News tweeted that a number of migrants were heard shouting: "If you want Boko Haram in this country, continue killing us."
The Sowetan said Durban's central business district was "under total lockdown" as police confronted crowds of locals and migrants.
Earlier, it was reported that several people had died and thousands displaced in violence in Durban's apartheid-era black townships.
The news service said police were overrun on Monday night as groups of locals moved from shop to shop, looting the possessions of migrants operating in the KwaMashu township.
Until now, most attacks have taken place in the informal settlements and townships in the which the poorest South Africans live.
Much of the violence in the past has been generated by a struggle for access to resources in those areas, with successful migrant business owners becoming the target of their local counterparts, as well as of opportunistic criminals.
The current outbreak of attacks follows remarks by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini at the end of last month, in which he was reported to have criticised foreigners for taking over South Africa's wealth.
Local news media quoted him as saying that "when you walk in the street you cannot recognise a shop that you used to know because it has been taken over by foreigners, who then mess it up by hanging amanikiniki (shabby goods)."
In the meantime,the President of the Nigerian Union in South Africa, Ikechukwu Anyene, on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to help halt the xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in that country.
Anyene told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on phone from Pretoria, South Africa, that the latest spate of xenophobic attacks began three weeks ago. NAN reports that there are more than 800,000 Nigerians living in South Africa.
Anyene said Nigerians resident in some South African cities had gone into hiding to avoid being attacked by South Africans. The Nigerian government should urgently intervene and save our people from the attacks. They should prevail on the South African government to stop such attacks against Nigerians."It appears nothing is being is done to stop the attacks and Nigerians are worried about the situation," he said.
Anyene said during the attacks in Johannesburg last week, shops owned by Nigerians were looted and their owners seriously injured by the attackers. He said the Nigerian Union in South Africa had been in touch with local chapters in some provinces and had urged them to take precautionary measures to save themselves.
Anyene said that since Nigeria and South Africa established diplomatic relations, there had not been a single incident of xenophobic attack against South Africans living in Nigeria.
" The Nigerian government protects the lives and property of South Africans living in Nigeria We do not understand why from time to time, South Africans attack Nigerians in their country. The Federal Government should take the issue of xenophobic attacks in South Africa very seriously because Nigerians do not carry out xenophobic attacks against fellow Africans," he said.
Nigerians living in Durban, he said, had planned a protest march against the xenophobic attacks. He, however, said they were denied permit by the South African police.
The xenophobic attacks that began in KwaZulu-Natal two weeks ago have now spread to Johannesburg.
Thousand of people are expected to attend a march in South Africa's coastal city of Durban in solidarity with the country's foreign nationals.
The march comes after weeks of attacks against foreign nationals in which at least five people have been killed and 74 people arrested since the end of March, according to Colonel Jay Naicker, police spokesperson.
Last Thursday, as many people prepared to march in the coastal city of Durban in KwaZuluNatal, many shops also remained closed in the business capital of the country, Johannesburg.
Groups of people were said to be travelling from various other provinces to join in the show of solidarity with the foreign nationals.
Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Durban, tweeted the following: Similar attacks occurred in 2008 in which at least 60 people were killed.
Messages circulating on social media warned people in Gauteng province and KwaZuluNatal to be on high alert for possible attacks and to also remain indoors.
More than 2,000 foreigners have already sought shelter in refugee camps in Durban, a South African aid group said on Wednesday.
The refugee camps, set up on sports fields around Durban, will not be large enough if attacks on immigrants continue, said Imtiaz Sooliman of the Gift of the Givers organisation.
Those who can afford it are planning to leave the country, he said.
"They've lost their houses, they've lost their businesses, they've lost everything," Sooliman said.
The organisation made the following appeal to the government on social media on Wednesday:
South Africa President Jacob Zuma condemned the violence and assigned several cabinet ministers to work on the problem with officials in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The government is addressing South African citizens' "complaints about illegal and undocumented migrants, the takeover of local shops and other businesses by foreign nationals as well as perceptions that foreign nationals perpetrate crime", Zuma's office said in a statement.
He also issued a warning for illegally operating foreign owned businesses to close their doors.
In Malawi, officials have set up transit camps expected to house Malawians returning to the country, Kondwani Nankhumwa, the country's information minister, said.
posted by
Moffat Gibson
