Let me get this straight. An individual is thrown from a moving train in South Africa, sustaining injuries including broken ankles – and the South African police have not opened a case – which means that the perpetrators will get away with it?
“As tens of thousands of foreign football fans lap up Cape Town’s hospitality, a Zimbabwean living in a township just outside the city since 2006 is in hospital fearing for his life, branded a makwerekwere and thrown from a moving train.
His ankles were fractured and he hit his head when he landed on a platform. But police say Reason Wandi, 27, fell from the train and did not open a case.
Wandi said he witnessed the devastating xenophobic attacks in 2008 in Khayalitsha and now feared that, if South African made good on their alleged threat against African from other countries who refused to return home after the World Cup, he feared he might not survive a second outbreak.”
This is not the first time we have heard of this threat, coupled together with a like threat in Zimbabwe that ZANU PF will visit a reign of terror on MDC members and the population… and yet we hear nothing from the politicians or the party leaders to head off such a threat or orgy of violence.
Is this because they know what is coming, are unable to stop it, and are secretly looking forward to the disruption and chaos which will act as cover for them and their goons?
“They said ‘they must go back home to their countries, makwerekweres’,” Wandi said. “I thought they wouldn’t notice that I’m a foreigner and then the train started moving.”
A few people had held the carriage door open. He recalled how they shifted their attention to him and said: “These people are the problem. They must go home and solve their own problems in their country.”
A group of about five had then picked him up and thrown him from the moving train on to Old Mutual Station, about 15 minutes from Cape Town. He passed out.
“I woke up. People were running over to me. I started to feel pain all over,” said Wandi.
He said he had boarded the next train and sat on the floor of the carriage. A woman gave her seat to him as it was obvious that he was injured.
The train had stopped at Bellville Station about 30 minutes later. Wandi said he had had to crawl out of the carriage.
“I couldn’t walk or stand. I asked a Metro guard for help. He called the police and I was taken to Bellville police station.”
Police had later called an ambulance and he was taken to Tygerberg Hospital.
Police spokesperson Fienie Nimb confirmed that Wandi had been taken to the railway police station but said their records stated he had fallen out of the train. No case had been opened. Nimb said Wandi was welcome to lay a formal complaint.”
So the police have decided that he fell out of the moving train. Train doors open inwards, so for him to fall out of the train, someone else would have had to hold the door open for him…
“A nurse at the hospital said xenophobia-related cases had increased in the past week.”
Another story which lends credence to the feared xenophobic attacks to come.
“Some Zimbabweans based in South Africa were making hasty arrangement to leave the country as threats of xenophobic attacks in the aftermath of the FIFA World Cup finals escalate.
One group was camped outside a truck stop with their belonging on the motorway near Paarl in a desperate bid to catch the first ride out of the Western cape.
They said they had been told that they, along with their homes, would be burned after the FIFA world cup finals.”
I have been writing about the probable attacks since a army chaplain in Zimbabwe let the idea let slip the plan at the memorial service for one of Mugabe’s personal guards. And this has been backed up time and time again by the more militant of Mugabe’s supporters in Zimbabwe, while the threat of xenophobic attacks has been growing for a couple of months in the run-up to the World Cup – which finishes on Sunday.
“People interviewed by local media said they were fleeing Dunoon, Philippi, Philippi east, Crossroads, Malmesbury and Grabouw.
The Zimbabweans claimed they had been confronted by local residents who threatened to ‘burn them and their homes”, after the World Cup.”
Many of the Zimbabweans in South Africa, fled there to escape the ZANU PF intimidation, oppression and violence and now seem to have no choice but to return to Zimbabwe and face whatever retribution Mugabe’s people may have waiting for them…
And when it does happen, remember that this is a real threat that I have been writing about for quite some time now…
Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man
