Not all Alex residents are xenophobic, says Mopasi
The late former Frelimo guerrilla leader and first president of an independent Mozambique Samora Machel lived here for many years.
As the Alexandra Dudula Movement onslaught gains momentum in the township, Alex historian Thabo Mopasi has appealed to people to stop associating the township with xenophobic tendencies.
“Not all people in Alexandra have xenophobic tendencies,” Mopasi told Alex News as he sought to do damage control by trying to ‘clean-up’ the image of the township as a springboard of anti-migrant sentiments.
The first xenophobic incidents in Alexandra broke out in 2008 in the area commonly referred to then as ‘Beirut’. These are areas around the two men’s hostels of KwaNobuhle and KwaMadala which were then IFP strongholds and prompted then IFP leader Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi to fly down and call his supporters to order.
Then came the incident of a Mozambican street trader, Emmanuel Sithole, who was stabbed to death by four youngsters from KwaMadala Hostel on April 18, 2015. The killers subsequently fled the township and were arrested back in their homesteads in KwaZulu-Natal.
On March 13 this year, scores of Alexandrians led by the Dudula Movement and #OperationFiyela launched yet another attack on foreign hawkers at the Pan Africa Square and subsequently, clashes erupted between locals and foreign nationals, leading to the arrest of the
Dudula 6.
The clashes have since spread like wildfire into other parts of the country, such as Soweto, Diepsloot, Daveyton, eThekwini. In Diepsloot, a township made up of residents evicted from the banks of the perennially flooding Jukskei River, saw the horrific mob lynching of a Zimbabwean man, Elvis Nyathi, who bolted from his house when the mob approached.
They gave chase and caught him and burnt him alive after stoning him when he failed to produce his passport that allows him to be legally in the country.
Horrified by all this, Mopasi pointed out that Alex residents must not all be painted by the same xenophobic brush. “We lived here for many years with the late Frelimo guerrilla leader Samora Machel, who became the first president of an independent Mozambique in 1975.
“Machel lived at house number 49 in 9th Avenue in the 60s, which is today a National Heritage Site. We should not generalise on incidents done by a few people.
“I have worked for many years of my life in this township putting up statues, museums, and giving away books and making films to illustrate how important migrants were and still are in the history of the township.”
