South Africa police clash with foreigners in Cape Town

Chaos rocked Cape Town as police clashed with foreign nationals who had staged a three-week sit-in outside the UN refugee agency’s offices.

The officers fired stun grenades, rubber bullets, water cannons and arrested hundreds of the foreigners who were demanding that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) evacuates them from South Africa as they “no longer feel safe.”

The crisis has been deepening for weeks following a fresh wave of xenophobic attacks early last month that left 12 dead, most of them South Africans.

More than 1,000 people have been camping at the UNHCR offices saying they feared “prejudice and violence” and were seeking help to be taken “anywhere” other than continued stay in the country.

A man, speaking to a TV interviewer through the grill of a police van after his arrest, said the protesters only “wanted their rights”.

The man, who did not reveal his name or country of origin, said he had been working in South Africa for 20 years but efforts to get asylum status has been futile.

Some of the protesters were injured during the melee that saw women and children also arrested. Some were seen screaming hysterically in the chaos.

A woman, who said she was Kenyan, told the TV reporter she prefers to be taken to “America, or Britain, anywhere” but not her home country.

“People are demanding to be taken to a safer place because South Africa is not safe anymore,” said another man.

The occupation in the corridor of the Waldorf Arcade between St George’s Street and Burg Street – in the very heart of Cape Town’s business district – began on October 8 and has spread out into neighbouring streets.

A similar protest action outside the UNHCR offices in Pretoria has been ongoing for three weeks, so far without police intervention.