Somalis in S. Africa targeted by mobs

MASIPHUMELELE, SOUTH AFRICA —  One evening in August, Mohammad Abdille watched his normally polite customers in this drab, crowded black township outside Cape Town become a mob.

The whole place seemed to go mad: People who happily bought cheaply priced Chinese goods from the Somalian trader were sweeping down on his small shop like crows, grabbing whatever they could.

As Abdille, 28, hastily locked himself inside the shop, trying to save what he could, he heard the mob screaming, “Go home, Somalis, we don’t want Somalis here.” Then rocks began to hammer on his wall.

The mob used the word barakas, which had become slang in Masiphumelele for the Somalis after the first Somalian trader wrote baraka on his shop wall. It comes from the Somali word for blessing.

Many Somalis hoped that life in South Africa, with Africa’s strongest economy, would indeed be a blessing after fleeing perhaps the most chaotic and dangerous country on Earth. But a wave of xenophobic attacks in poor black and mixed-race South African neighborhoods against Somalian traders has seen dozens of them killed in the last few months and many more maimed.

At least four Somalian traders have been killed in the last few weeks, according to a Somalian community organization in South Africa, which puts the number of killings since midyear at 40. South African police do not organize crime statistics on the ethnicity of victims, but police in the Western Cape province, where most attacks took place, put the killings at half that number.

In the optimism that followed the abolishment of apartheid, South Africa dubbed itself the “rainbow nation” to denote racial tolerance. But in poor townships, where economic survival is at stake and unemployment is estimated to be as high as 80%, the attacks display a disturbing undercurrent of xenophobic violence.

In Masiphumelele, 27 Somalian shops were looted Aug. 28, many of them burned to the ground, and 71 Somalis were forced to flee, in what traders said were efforts by business rivals to eliminate Somalian traders. The Somalis, mainly young men, live in terror and many have been forced to give up their shops.

Some have trickled back to the township in recent weeks, hoping to start again.

“I thought I came to escape war. But then we find this funny war against us here,” said Omar Somey, 27, whose brother was killed and cousin blinded in another August attack on their shop in Khayelitsha township.

The Department of Home Affairs says more than 6,000 Somalian refugees and more than 17,000 Somalian asylum-seekers are in South Africa, fleeing a country that has had raging clan warfare and no government for most of the last 15 years.

But they have escaped to one of the world’s most violent societies, for a country not at war, with more gun killings per capita than any other country. Police in the Western Cape were slow to recognize the racist aspect of the attacks on Somalis, putting the violence down to random criminality.

Last week, South Africa’s Cabinet condemned the attacks on Somalis, saying they fueled perceptions of South Africans as xenophobic.

“Our freedom was built, among other things, on the back of many South Africans living in exile in many countries around the world where we were welcomed with open arms. This government will not tolerate attacks on any citizens of the world,” a Cabinet statement said.

The Somalis stand out in townships not only because they look different and use a different language, but because they attract more customers to their shops than local traders, creating resentment.

Hossein Mohammad, Abdille’s business partner, said one reason for the violence was jealousy by other businessmen, because the Somalis offered lower prices than other township traders. But gesturing to a mattress and kettle on the floor, he said the Somalis slept in their shops to avoid paying rent, shared transport costs and bought together in bulk to keep prices low.

“There was a meeting just before the attacks. People said: ‘We want to kill these Somalis. We want to remove them from their shops,’ ” Mohammad said.

He said that before the attacks, even loyal customers started telling him: “Baraka, you are no good. You’d better move out.”

Abdille was barricaded in his shop for four hours the night of the attacks, calling the local police number over and over from his cellphone, afraid he’d be killed by the rampaging mob.

In Khayelitsha that same month, Somalian trader Mohammad Abdulahi, 36, was in his shop with his cousin Somey and Somey’s brother when armed men burst in.

The gunmen were the last thing he ever saw. One attacker shot him in the temple, blinding him.

“They didn’t take anything from the shop. They just killed,” said Abdulahi, referring to the shooting of his cousin. Now Abdulahi lies in a room in a Cape Town hostel, dreaming of a reunion with his wife and children.

“I lost part of my life. You can see me now. I can’t see. I’m blind,” he said. “I can no longer work as a daily breadwinner, and that’s the biggest problem that can happen to you in this life.”

The South African Human Rights Commission said the xenophobia against Somalis was a national problem that had occurred in many areas, not just the Western Cape.

“This lack of tolerance places all non-nationals and the general society at large at risk of similar attacks,” the commission said. “These deaths are a blight on South Africa’s record as a constitutional democracy that respects and protects the rights of everyone. South Africa has a moral and legal obligation to protect and respect the rights of all who live in it, irrespective of neither nationality nor immigration status.”

Opposition leader Tony Leon accused the country’s minister of safety and security, Charles Nqakula, of “monumental indifference” after the minister said it would take too much police time and resources to determine how many Somalis had been killed, robbed or assaulted in the last two years.

Deprived of his sight, aware he’ll never work again, Abdulahi depends on the charity of other Somalis and fights depression by immersing himself in prayer.

But religious faith, including daily prayers on the red prayer rug in his room, cannot salve the bitterness he feels toward his attackers and the South African authorities for failing to protect him and others like him.

“If I’d known this could happen in South Africa,” he said, “I would never have come here.”

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