A senior researcher at Human Rights Watch South Africa, Dewa Mavinga, has cautioned politicians to avoid making statements which could spark violence ahead of the May 8 elections.
Mavinga’s caution comes after a video on social media showed President Cyril Ramaphosa saying people just arrive in townships and set up businesses without licenses and permits.
Mavinga says people can interpret such statements according to the conditions they live under in townships or informal settlements and in some cases the utterances can lead to xenophobic attacks.
“If you look at these attacks on foreign nationals, they are primarily happening in informal settlements, where people are struggling and when they receive these kind of political messages, how they interpret them is very important and this is where we urge the leadership including President Ramaphosa to consider the impact and how some of these political messages will be received on the ground, because sometimes, even if it’s not intended, it triggers a wave of attacks.”
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