East African nationals are among victims of xenophobic violence that broke out last week in Durban, South Africa and extended to other parts of the country.

As the attacks spread to Johannesburg on Friday, Kenya announced plans to evacuate its nationals, with the Foreign Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohammed saying they are keenly following the events in South Africa.

The attacks, which have mostly targeted foreigners, have increased in the past few days, forcing foreign-owned shops and businesses in Johannesburg to close down.

Unemployed black South Africans, who accuse African immigrants of taking their jobs, have been blamed for the attacks meant to force foreign African nationals to go back to their homelands. At least six foreigners, among them a 14-year-old boy, were killed and 10,000 displaced.

South African authorities have made efforts to repulse the mobs since the violence broke out, with 12 people arrested overnight as anti-foreigner attacks spread to parts of downtown Johannesburg.

“Twelve suspects were arrested for trying to break into foreign-owned shops,” said police spokesman Lt-Col Lungelo Dlamini.

According to reports, the protesters from a local hostel demanded foreign nationals leave South Africa, setting cars alight and clashing with police. No injuries were reported, said Dlamini.

The areas remained tense Friday morning, with hostel-dwellers telling reporters they wanted immigrants to know they were not welcome in the country. President Jacob Zuma condemned the violence in parliament.

Frustration or anger

“No amount of frustration or anger can ever justify the attacks on foreign nationals and the looting of their shops,” he said on Thursday night.

Tanzanian media reported the deaths of two Tanzanians in the violence that rocked Durban on Tuesday. But the country’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Elibahati Ngoyai Lowassa, said he was yet to receive official confirmation whether the deaths were connected to the anti-immigrant attacks.

He said the High Commission only has information about a shop belonging to a Tanzanian, which was set ablaze in Durban during the violence.

Kenya’s Foreign Ministry said no Kenyan had been attacked, but confirmed that some had sought refuge in camps.

There are about 800 Kenyans living in Durban, 100 of them working in the informal sector. The majority are students and faculty members at the Kwa Zulu Natal University on the outskirts of Durban.

A note to Ugandans living in South Africa by their High Commission advised them not to live “a very conspicuous lifestyle that annoys the public,” among other guidelines on what to do as the violence escalated.

The High Commission noted that there were no Ugandan casualties, but said African ambassadors were working with the authorities in Pretoria on how to resolve the violence.

The recent outbreak of xenophobic violence has been linked to comments by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, who said that foreign migrants in the country were taking South Africans’ jobs and that they should “pack their belongings and go.”

That is believed to have fanned the violence in Durban, where Zulus constitute the largest ethnic group, and led to the worst scenes of unrest since January, when looters burnt down foreign-owned stores during clashes that led to four deaths.

The grim images of what amounted to pogroms on the streets cast a permanent shadow on the narrative of multi-ethnic and racial harmony associated with Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation.

Other than Zimbabwe, whose nationals have been the targets of previous xenophobic attacks, immigrants from Mozambique, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania and Ethiopia have been affected by the current wave of xenophobic violence.

As frustrations grow over high unemployment and lack of opportunities, successful foreign African migrants have become easy targets of these attacks from young black South Africans.

South Africa’s unemployment is currently at 25 per cent, but experts suggest the real figure could be much higher.

The size of the migrant population in South Africa is about 5 million and the majority of them come from Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Illegal immigration

Xenophobia in multiracial South Africa is a complex problem, layered over with the country’s history of apartheid as well as its peculiar relationship with the rest of the African continent. There are genuine frustrations over the scale of illegal immigration to the country.

One in four people in South Africa is jobless, and this, combined with widespread poverty, easily feeds into anti-immigrant feelings.

Africans are baffled by the attacks. The attacks are mostly directed towards African migrants running shops and small businesses.

The African Centre for Migration and Society says 78.1 per cent of migrants in South Africa are Africans, 17 per cent are whites and 3.2 per cent are Asians.

Employ locals

But the notion that enterprising Africans come to compete for jobs with unemployed black South Africans has been challenged by a recent study by the Johannesburg-based Gauteng City-Region Observatory, which said that most African migrants with small businesses actually employ more locals.

The study interviewed about 263 migrant traders in Johannesburg and found that they created 1,223 jobs, 500 of which went to South Africans.

In Soweto, the 131 migrant traders interviewed created 224 jobs. More than 100 of these jobs were held by South Africans.

According to the study, the perception that foreign shop owners are crowding out local traders was not based on facts, as eight out of 10 (82 per cent) informal business owners were South Africans. In the formal sector, nine out of 10 (87 per cent) business owners were South Africans.

Early this year, foreign shopkeepers in and around Soweto, south of Johannesburg, were forced to vacate their premises after violence and looting broke out.

Becoming frustrated

In 2008, post-apartheid South Africa saw its worst xenophobic attacks when more than 60 people, mostly foreigners from other African countries, were killed.

African governments are becoming frustrated with the slow response of President Zuma’s administration to the wave of attacks on foreign nationals living in South Africa, and some have been forced to take action on their own.

Malawi and Kenya have announced plans to evacuate their nationals while a senior official of Nigeria’s newly elected All Progressive Congress (APC), Tolu Adesanya, announced that they had asked South African authorities to end the violence or else Abuja will close down South African-owned businesses.

South African companies such as telecom company MTN, retail giant Shoprite, satellite TV provider MultiChoice and cement giant AfriSam have branches across the continent.

China’s Foreign Ministry has already made formal complaints to South Africa over attacks against its nationals. Scores of shops owned by Chinese nationals have been looted during the latest wave of violence.

Additional reporting by AFP, Washington Post-Bloomberg