I was watching the news last week and there was an interview with a Zimbabwean national commenting about the xenophobia crisis that has gripped South Africa. The man being interviewed said that ‘there is no crisis in Zimbabwe; the crisis is in South Africa’. This coming after South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, famously said that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the post election violence gripping Zimbabwe.

Maybe this gentleman who was interviewed was correct. What is currently happening in South Africa is unacceptable. The ruling party, ANC, has now taken matters into its own hands and started off by demanding that the army be called upon to help stop these attacks. This is the first time that the army has been called upon onto the streets of South Africa ever since the dark days of apartheid. This just goes to show the magnitude of the crisis in South Africa.

Today (Sunday), high ranking members of the ANC have been deployed across Gauteng to visit ‘problem areas’ and hope that their presence will help stop the attacks. The question is, “will the people listen to the ANC officials?” There are suggestions that a large reason for these xenophobia attacks are because the government has let the poor people of South Africa down and these people are angry. The poor in South Africa can barely afford to survive; the have very little food, no jobs and no houses to live in. And now you call upon the people who have ‘let them down’ to go and speak to them with the hope of calming them down? That does just not make any sense.

There are still many unanswered questions with regards to this current xenophobia crisis: why was there not enough intelligence to predict these attacks? Why were the attacks not halted in Gauteng before they spread across to other provinces in South Africa? Why did it take so long to deploy the army? And most importantly, why have the attacks not stopped?

Someone has to answer these questions but don’t hold your breath waiting for these answers as they may never be known. The government is failing to get on top of this situation and this is a bad reflection on South Africa. There had been calls for government officials to step down amidst the electricity crisis gripping South Africa, no ones ‘head rolled’ at that time. Now there are calls for people, including the president to step down after failing to handle these xenophobia attacks. Is it time for President Thabo Mbeki to throw in the towel?

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