Congress of the People (Cope) president Mosiuoa Lekota says the ANC government is allowing foreigners to flood SA and called for the introduction of refugee camps for foreigners. He criticised the government’s handling of immigrants‚ saying that during the struggle against apartheid‚ ANC exiles were confined to refugee camps and not allowed to “push out” residents. “We were in exile ourselves. Our own South Africans were abroad. We were not allowed to occupy the cities of those countries and then push the citizens out‚” he said. The issue of foreign nationals is a very sensitive topic in SA and there have been numerous xenophobic attacks and looting of shops owned by foreigners. Lekota said that SA — even during periods when there had been a high influx of foreigners‚ particularly from neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, who were fleeing political instability — had never housed foreigners in refugee camps. He said that putting foreigners into camps was a similar approach to wha...
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