Cape Town, South Africa - South Africa's Inkatha Freedom Party on Friday condemned this week’s attacks on foreign nationals who had their businesses petrol-bombed in Tokoza, Gauteng. 'The latest xenophobic attacks are disgraceful and lamentable. As a nation, we have an obligation to assist refugees who flee their countries fearing for their own safety. And we have an obligation to ensure that we uphold the values and principles of South Africa's Constitution and human rights culture at all times,' said IFP MP Petros Sithole.

Sithole said the latest incident was a warning to government that the people of South Africa are no longer willing to tolerate government's failures.

'People are growing increasingly desperate due to the high levels of poverty and unemployment. This latest incident has again drawn attention to the fact that government's strategic fight against poverty is failing.

'Furthermore, government must urgently address the abuse of our asylum seeker system and South Africa's porous borders. It is the failure of the State to exercise sound policies, especially in the field of immigration control, which has become a serious threat to the future of our young democracy. Unless government takes responsibility for these failures, levels of discontent and xenophobic attacks will increase,' Sithole said.

Meanwhile, IFP spokesman Mario Oriani-Ambrosini has called on the Human Rights Commission to investigate the truth of several reports that the police are systematically rounding up and intimidating Congolese citizens in South Africa, on account of not only their nationality but also of their ethnicity and regional origins.

He said it appears that the victims of this alleged systematic human rights violation are from specific areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo which are opposed to the government.

“Any truth in these allegation would suggest not only major systematic human rights violations by the police on South African soil, but also that in an covert manner, outside a known policy framework or parliamentary approval, the South African government has been drawn into the Congolese civil war,” the spokesman said.

Pana 27/01/2012