ANC asks for help from other liberation parties to fight xenophobia

The ANC has appealed to liberation parties in Southern Africa to help fight xenophobia because the wave of attacks SA was experiencing would isolate "Africa's most industrialised economy" and in turn affect economies in the region.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule said the attacks, which had been labelled xenophobic, were partly an act of destabilisation by criminals.

He was speaking in Victoria Falls on the sidelines of the 10th annual meeting of secretaries-general of liberation movements including the ANC, Zanu-PF, Mozambique's Frelimo, Tanzania's Chama Chama Pinduzi, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, Namibia's South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo), the Botswana Democratic Party and Zambia's Patriotic Front.

"As SA, there is no way we can be against our own brothers and sisters," Magashule said.

"It's not true to say shops owned by foreigners are the ones targeted because Shoprite, owned by a South African consortium, was the first to be attacked."

He vowed the South African government would not watch criminals take charge.

"Criminality is criminality. There is a strong element of criminality in the form of looting and destroying property, and if you commit crime you must be punished."

Zanu-PF's secretary for administration, Obert Mpofu, blamed the spate of violence on the West.

"The truth is that we liberated ourselves and we are sovereign nations, but we are still poor and begging from the former colonisers. Some people use their budgets to exploit us economically, politically and culturally," he said.

You may think it is blacks against blacks; it's the enemy's agenda to divide us so that we start pointing fingers at each other.

—  Obert Mpofu

"There is a bigger agenda behind that. You may think it is blacks against blacks; it's the enemy's agenda to divide us so that we start pointing fingers at each other."

However, the Patriotic Front's Josephine Chilufya said that the ANC should show more commitment to fighting xenophobia because many of its leaders and Umkhonto weSizwe fighters had been housed and trained in Zambia during the fight against apartheid.

Eunice Lipinke of Swapo said regional states should make strides to ease the pressure on SA by improving their own economies and enacting political reforms.

Nigeria has repatriated more than 600 of its citizens from SA after the violence, while the Zimbabwe government has repatriated at least 171 people.

Two Zimbabweans were killed in the violence in SA, the conference was told.