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Berea and Yeoville the only "liberated" zones as Johannesburg's Kerk and Leyds Street corner Rissik become a shadow of themselves |
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Johannesburg's Central Business District is today a pale shadow of its bustling self as immigrants stay away for fear of xenophobic South African mobs rampaging the streets looking for booty, and women to rape.
There is the same feeling as shops remain closed similar to the marches of the 1990s which brought down trade in the CBD and saw businesses relocating to Sandton, Randburg and other such places.
One wonders what will happen now if those people who replaced the relocated businesses are forced to abandon the area.
Kerk Street is where foreigners ply their trades, selling vegetables, prepared food to whatever wares they are able to, plaiting hair and any of many lawful and legal activities they engage in to survive.
Today just a handful of foreigners were visible and one local woman trader sought to take full advantage of this situation shouting "Hozani, Hozani (come, come)" to passers by who all but ignored her.
The streets of Johannesburg are at the moment witnessing a new tension between peoples as facial expressions betray distruct, suspicion and downright animosity.
Watchful, is the key word to describe the manner of pedestrians.
Both men and women are wary of each other as they pass each other, criss-crossing the streets of the once vibrant city centre of Egoli.
It has now been turned into a shell by the envy and greed of some local layabouts paid to propel some local politicians into power through the use of xenophobia as a trojan horse.
On Leyds Street corner Rissik, Zimbabwean travellers who help the South African economy through shopping for food stuffs and such like on a daily basis huddle in a shed where they keep a piercing eye on their goods bought with hard to come by cash.
They sit there and await their respective transport to take them and their precious goods to their various destinations in Zimbabwe where their relatives expect them to return with the goods they set out to buy.
You can imagine the impact on family cohesion being robbed by xenophobic mobs will have back home.
Meanwhile, the buzz at Newtown where the Market Theatre is located and where many different African nationals from as far as Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi trade, has all but died down as trade ground to a halt affter mobs killed a fellow Black man trading in the area.
Berea, Hillbrow and Yeoville remain the only "liberated zones" where foreigners are free to be themselves. These are Joburg surburbs where the drug trade is well known but also where hosest living foreigners have established home.
It is also a place where xenophobic mobs would have to deal with well-armed foregners protecting themselves and their families from the madness that seems to have gripped Johannesburg.
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Tuesday, 20 May, 2008
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