By Onke Ngcuka
JOHANNESBURG, Sept 3 (Reuters) - South African police
arrested more than 80 people and confirmed five deaths as riots
in Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria intensified on Tuesday,
spreading to surrounding townships with roving groups attacking
mainly foreign-owned shops.
The streets of Alexandra township, at walking distance from
the skyscrapers of Johannesburg's financial centre Sandton, were
littered on Tuesday afternoon with broken bricks and glass from
buildings torched in overnight fires and debris from police
battles with local groups.
An Ethiopian shop owner, Abushe Dastaa, pointed to bare
shelves and an empty fridge and told Reuters TV his entire shop
had been emptied and vandalised overnight.
"Even now we are scared to come this side," he said. His
store sells items like bread, milk and phone cards in the
working class neighbourhood, which is regularly rattled by
unrest and protests over poor living conditions and jobs.
The latest wave of unrest in South Africa has raised fears
of a recurrence of violence aimed at foreigners in 2015 in which
at least seven people were killed. Before that, some 60 people
were killed in a wave of unrest around the country in 2008.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said on Tuesday he was
urgently sending a special envoy to meet with President Cyril
Ramaphosa to secure the "safety of (Nigerian citizens') lives
and property".
Police have yet to pinpoint what triggered the violence,
which began on Sunday when protesters armed with makeshift
weapons roamed the streets of Pretoria's business district
pelting shops with rocks and petrol bombs and running off with
goods. High unemployment and widespread poverty have been cited as
possible triggers for the recent disturbances and attacks on
immigrants, but some officials say the riots may be the work of
criminal syndicates.
"We can't rule out pure criminality, of criminals using a
sensitive situation where there are real grievances on issues of
unemployment and foreign nationals," police minister Bheki Cele
told reporters.
Cele confirmed five people had been killed in the three days
of rioting, but did not give further details on the
circumstances, or on arrests.
He ruled out sending in the army, as the government did in
Cape Town in July to quell a spate of gang-related
killings.
The premier of Gauteng province, David Makhura, said during
an inspection of the damage in Alexandra that there was a
"xenophobic sentiment" underlying the attacks. He said 86 people
around the province, which includes the city of Johannesburg,
had been arrested, seven of them in Alexandra.
Ramaphosa condemned the violence, saying in a video posted
on Twitter that "attacking businesses run by foreign nationals
is totally unacceptable".
Immigration to South Africa from across the continent and
from parts of southeast Asia picked up in the early 1990s,
spurred by the end of apartheid rule and the economic boom that
followed.
But in recent years immigration has become a sensitive
issue, with anti-immigrant attacks, economic hardship and a
government clampdown on immigrants and asylum seekers.