South African businesses and citizens in Nigeria and Zambia have come under attack from angry mobs spilling onto the streets of Lagos and Lusaka out of retaliation against the xenophobic anarchy that has spread across Gauteng and other parts of the country since Sunday.
In footage shared with FTWOnline, a single car was targeted by a hoard of stick-wielding people forcing the vehicle to a standstill and pursuing its occupants who managed to alight unscathed.
Other footage showed a mall in Lusaka branded with Pick & Pay’s logo being set upon by hundreds of people rushing towards an entrance apparently to go on the rampage.
Nearby a sign indicating the presence of a South African High Commission office had a fire raging underneath it as aggressive bystanders flung items on top, further stoking the fires of their outrage against the treatment of foreign nationals in South Africa.
Yet more video content showed trucks being prevented from entering Zambia at Kazungula as an identified person related how the police are battling to control a crowd that almost seized a driver, presumably South African, who had to make a dash for his life back into Botswana.
Reports were also received about South African trucks not being allowed into the DRC.
And the All Truck Drivers Foundation, the unregistered transport organisation that embarked on vigilante attacks against foreign national drivers working in South Africa and the companies accused of employing them, apparently started stopping Namibian trucks from entering the country.
It prompted Namibian companies to order their trucks bound for South Africa to turn around until the situation is safe again.
In fierce condemnation over developments of the last few days, Scania’s managing director in Namibia, Clifford Marehbank, spoke of the effects that violently disrupted logistics will have on the economies of both Namibia and South Africa.
“What the South Africans are doing are not only crazy but preposterous”, he said.
“South African trucks also come here but we do not burn their trucks as they are doing.”
Unfortunately the retaliatory torching of trucks seemed imminent in certain locations where eye witness accounts stated that the police risk being overwhelmed by protestors wanting to set fire to South African trucks.
