7 Dead, Hundreds Fleeing as Anti-Immigrant Mobs Ravage South African Suburbs

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,356536,00.html

by the associated press

This article is about how some violence is emerging in South Africa towards foreigners. Local people are accusing foreigners of taking their jobs and homes. Robbers are now taking that in their advantage, using it as an excuse in taking things from people’s homes or banks. The government is now getting involved in trying to calm down the violence that is occurring. The President of the National Congress, Jacob Zuma says, “We cannot allow South Africa to become famous for xenophobia.” This area in South Africa has become the crime capital of the world. Over the past month there have been multiple incidents where many people were injured or killed. The violence is increasing, and it’s getting worse, the police there even say that it is hard to cope with all of this rage. Among the crowds of raged people, they hold signs up that say, “Foreigners, get out!” or “They steal our jobs, and everything that belongs to us!” People are now fleeing from Zimbabwe to get out of all this violence and they are afraid that they may be accused in doing a crime as well.

This article related to the AP World theme, Impact of interaction among and within major societies. It relates to this theme because the interaction between people in South Africa is being affected by the coming of foreigners, illegal or legal. The people of Zimbabwe are not happy with what these foreigners are doing, and so they are taking action. Violence is now emerging because of their anger towards this.
South Africa has always had a high level of immigration. Having so many foreigners means that you have a lot of unskilled people, which means that South Africa will suffer a little economically. They don’t want to have people come in if they are not going to be committed to their life there. This has been an issue for South Africa for a while.
This article was written by the Associated Press which is an organization in which they talk about different events occurring all around the world. Their job is to give us facts on what the event was about. In this case, there is little bias shown, because it was for a more factual purpose.
Someone I would have liked to have heard from was one of the emigrants themselves. Were they really acting in that behavior? Was their life that much better here than where they came from? Knowing their side of the story could help us understand what is really happening, and how they are being treated amongst the violence.
I was surprised when I read that people were beginning to behave violently towards the immigrants. I think that it is a very immature way in handling the situation. I couldn’t believe all of the things that they were doing, people being injured and killed, riots and mobs occurring. There is so much hatred going on over there, I just don’t understand why? I also think that the government should act a little faster with what they are going to do about the violence and immigration policies. If so many people are getting angered by the large amount of immigration, then the government should act more strictly on that, they don’t seem to be handling the violent situations well at all. More structure should be put on South Africa.