Madam Speaker, the wave of violence against immigrants in our country that started on 11 May this year, came as a big shock to the majority of the people of our country. As I have said before, these events have indeed shamed our nation and we have to ensure that such crimes do not recur.
On 14 May, a ministerial task team was set up to investigate the nature and possible causes of the attacks in Gauteng and, later, other provinces. That ministerial team has interacted with its counterparts from the relevant provinces and work continues to understand these issues fully. That ministerial task team will report in due course.
At the same time, however, the South African Police Service has made an extensive investigation based on the arrests and compiled a report on the causes of attacks on foreigners. This report covers a period from 2005 when various towns in the Free State were affected by service delivery protests, or what were called service delivery protests, which among other things, resulted in attacks on businesses owned by Pakistanis and people from Bangladesh.
From that time up to the recent violence against foreigners, the report compiled by the police says those who had been involved in the violence, gave the following as reasons for these attacks. Let me emphasise this, Madam Speaker, this is what was said by people who had been arrested and interrogated by the police, and that doesn't necessarily reflect the truth.
What they say is that the following are amongst some of the reasons for these attacks: that there is a perception that foreigners are responsible for the high levels of crime; that foreigners take up jobs that should be reserved for South Africans; that South African businesses, primarily within in the informal settlements, are not profitable due to foreign-owned businesses offering products at lower prices and remaining open for longer hours; that foreign-owned businesses trade in stolen and counterfeit goods, thus allowing them to sell their goods cheaper; that the RDP houses are being allocated to foreign nationals by corrupt municipal and other officials; that foreign nationals are accessing social services, social grants, health care, and so on; and that local South African women prefer foreign nationals as they are able to spend more money on them than the locals do. [Laughter.]
Now, I am talking here about people who have been arrested because they had been involved in the violence and when the matter was raised as to why they attacked those people, they said that these were the reasons.
The fact of the matter is that we have to attend to all of these matters - whatever their truth or otherwise - so that no-one uses these as reasons to engage in unacceptable behaviour. Again, it is clear that we have to continue addressing the socioeconomic challenges as part of an all-round response. Indeed, in many areas affected by these attacks, it is clear that competition for resources such as housing, entrepreneurship and employment has been cited as the main reason for this unacceptable behaviour.
Further, it is also clear that these attacks were in many instances perpetrated by criminal elements, at times using the reasons given above to engage in criminal activities. In this regard we must reiterate that whatever grievances any South African may have, this cannot be any justification to murder, pillage, or destroy property. We are, indeed, investigating all of these matters, taking into account that each area affected has specific attributes that should be dealt with in their particular region. When this work has been completed, we will ensure that the lessons from this experience are communicated to the public. It is better for all of us to ensure that it does not recur.
Let me mention, for instance in this regard, some of the Somali traders have been saying to us that perhaps one of the things that needs to happen, is that there needs to be better regulation of the opening of the small spaza shops. In their experience, sometimes you get too big a concentration of spaza shops in an area and that, because of the intensity of the business competition, you then get this kind of consequence. Let's regulate this better - I am saying that some of the Somali traders are saying that - so that you are able to have small shops there which reflect the size of the market.
Of course, we are quite determined to ensure that the perpetrators of the violence are dealt with, and therefore special courts are being set up to speed up the prosecution of these people. Work is continuing to ensure that those temporary camps are properly equipped and everything else, so that, as much as possible, the people who are displaced are treated in as humane a manner as possible.
In that regard, I must thank all of the organisations of civil society that have participated in this process. In a sense what has happened raises, very sharply, these questions about social cohesion in our society.
Maybe the last thing I should say is that in the interaction of our officials with, for instance, the people who are at the Acacia camp in Pretoria, the message that has come from those people is that the attacks took them by surprise, because they had never sensed that there was any sense of hostility or antagonism between themselves and the communities within which they lived. So when this thing came, it came quite out of the blue, because the communities in which they live had never demonstrated any sense of xenophobia.
We always need to insist that what has happened in practice has in fact, whatever the correctness or otherwise of the reasons that had been stated by the people who have been arrested, opened a chance for looters and criminals. That really has been the focus of the attacks on the foreigners - to go for property. Indeed, many communities - the Zimbabwean community in Mamelodi for instance - are saying that they don't have any fear that they are going to be attacked, because their community is poor and has no property to loot. Indeed, no foreigners have been attacked in Mamelodi. It is, I think, critically important to focus on this matter of ensuring that the criminal elements in our ranks don't hide behind these notions in order to carry out the criminal activities which they have carried out. Thank you.