Let me explain. Here in South Africa we have what is an increasingly volatile problem. Unemployment exceeds 30% and, due to the many known problems in many of the African countries to the north, we have a large illegal immigration problem.
Many of the immigrants are men seeking gainful employment and/or safety. They are from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Congo, Nigeria and many others. Many of them are also trained with job skills (teachers, retail sales, engineers, professionals, etc.) and are hard workers.
Frustration and anger have been building among the local unemployed South Africans and much of that anger has been focused on these foreign nationals, considered by some as illegally stealing the work that is available.
All that is background to the violence that has sprung up around South Africa. Beginning about two weeks ago, shops and homes of foreign Africans were attacked in Johannesburg. The news reports of these attacks spread around the country slowly triggering like actions in townships and informal settlements throughout South Africa.
We, in our community of Paarl, thought it would never happen here - but last Friday it did. First a shop in Fairyland was looted and then the mobs grew. The police responded wonderfully by evacuating everyone before they could be attacked, so only property was the victim. But now we had a camp outside of town with a growing population of frightened people. What to do?
Monte Christo Ministries (MCM) responded quickly. Our new food centre, with equipment provided by World Emergency Relief (WER), had its grand opening a week ago and we happened to have a large batch of soup and some bread available. We agreed to provide the food.
