Somalis Taste South Africa Xenophobia

CAPE TOWN – Muhidin Hajji Mohammed, a Somali immigrant, was sorting out goods at his small shop near Cape Town when a group of mob showed up.

"I was balancing my day's sales when a mob of people came shouting on the top of their voices kill the Somali, kill the dog," Hajji Mohammed, 45, told IslamOnline.net.

In a flash of a minute, the mob started to take away whatever their hands could carry from the hawking sweets shop in the Mfuleni township.

His son was shot when he tried to prevent the mob from stealing the shop.

"My son who tried to intervene was shot twice in the stomach as my wife was raped by a group of youth," recalled a teary Mohammed, who arrived in South Africa from Somalia in 2001.

"My shop the only hope I had in life was swept clean, my dear son was shot and my lovely wife raped all because we are foreigners trying to make a decent living in this country."

The assault on the Somali immigrant is the latest in unabated attacks targeting the Somali community in South Africa.

Nine Somalis were killed in western Cape Town in a single weak this month.

"We Somalis are being witch hunted because we are hardworking compared to locals," said Abdihakim Mohammed Sheikh, the head of the Somali Community board of South Africa.

"They accuse us of frustrating their businesses by selling our goods cheaper compared to them."

More than 600 Somalis were killed in South Africa since 2002.

"Somalis are very hard working people, who arrive in South Africa with nothing but in a year they normally have money to open shops or buy cars, which makes locals jealous and they are killed," said Abdihakim.

South Africa is home to a Somali community of 20,000.

Xenophobia

Somali immigrants are now living in panic over attacks targeting their community.

"We are totally surprised that our community is being targeted by these ruthless people," Abdihakim said.

"Somalis don't do crime like other foreigners. We are people who strive to make a halal, honest living. So I don’t know why we are being targeted."

Jody Collopen of the South African Human rights Commission called for action to stop attacks against Somali immigrants.

"I appeal to the Government to immediately intervene in this matter as we shall not tolerate another blood bath in this country which belongs to all who live in it," he told IOL.

At least 62 people were killed last year in xenophobic attacks that displaced tens of thousands of people.

Anti-Somalis attacks have also drawn strong condemnation from South African President Jacob Zuma.

"South Africans don't know that the weapons that fought here against apartheid were being kept in Somalia," Zuma told a Somali delegation.

"The late Somali President Mohammed Siyad Barre helped us during our first half of the liberation struggle."

Somalia has been without an effective government since the ouster of Barre in 1991.

Since then, the Horn of Africa country sank into deadly violence that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

But for Hajji Mohammed, he aspires for the day he returns to his home town Mogadishu.

"Although I have northing to go back to, I'm happy Allah has saved me and my family," he said.

"We are all still alive and wish to return home for it is better to die there than being harassed here."