Johannesburg, South Africa - In a country with a history of violence like South Africa, there are few scenes of brutality that can still shock the nation.

The video that emerged on YouTube last weekend of a Somali man lying flat in a Port Elizabeth street has shocked many South Africans out of a general complacence over the rising incidence of violence against foreigners in the country.

The man, who was stripped naked, his genitals pelted with rocks, stones smashed over his head all the while receiving kicks to the face, became the latest victim of xenophobic violence in the country.

The 25-year-old man, Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, died of his injuries. Good is just one of the victims of the xenophobic violence that flared through northern Port Elizabeth and up to four other towns and cities across the country last week.

Five other Somalis were injured in the violence and almost every Somali-owned business in Port Elizabeth’s Booysen Park was burned or looted.

Good's family said he had been trying to salvage his goods in the small store he owned in Booysens Park when he met the ire of a mob.

National problem

Before the wave of violence hit Port Elizabeth, the sprawling township of Diepsloot in Johannesburg was a scene of chaos after a Somali shopkeeper killed two Zimbabweans he suspected to be thieves on the evening of Sunday, May 26.

Angered by the shootings, Diepsloot residents turned their attention on the Somalis, Pakistanis and other foreign nationals doing business in the township. Nineteen foreign-owned stores were attacked in a frenzy of xenophobic violence and looting over the next two days.

Though calm has been restored to Diepsloot, the Somali store at the centre of the issue remains closed. A co-owner of the store, Amina Hassan Abdi, a Somali woman who fled the conflict in the Horn of Africa in 2007, said the violence essentially destroyed her livelihood.

Timeline: Migrant Violence
2008: Over 60 people killed and thousands displaced in violence across the country. 

2009: 2500 immigrants (mostly Zimbabweans) were displaced in the farming town of De Doorns in the Western Cape after riots against them.

2010: The South African government formed the inter-ministerial committee on xenophobia.

2011: Around 120 foreign nationals killed, of which five were burnt alive.

2012: 140 foreign nationals killed and 250 others injured in violent attacks across the country

2013 March: More than 25 Somali-owned shops were looted in Mamelodi outside of Pretoria; Five Pakistani nationals were murdered in Mitchells Plain.

May: Somali man stoned and hacked to death in Port Elizabeth, five other Somalis injured but scores of shops looted in up to 4 towns and cities.

“You need money to open the shop again and I now have none,” she said. Abdi also previously worked as a street vendor in Diepsloot. She said the discrimination she faced every day forced her to give up her stall.

"I don’t look like a South African and I wear this,” she said, pointing to her hijab.

“Every day I was getting too much trouble, people were swearing me, they were shouting me, stealing my stuff ... they don't like us,” she said.

Just days before the looting of Somali-owned stores in Diepsloot, some 60 km south of Johannesburg, in the township of Sebokeng, foreign-owned stores were also systematically looted after a protest against poor governance in the area catalysed into a campaign to root out foreigners and foreign-owned businesses from the township.

By the time the police stepped in, all foreign-owned stores had been looted, the belongings of foreign nationals were burned and foreigners were driven out of the township.

Despite the targeting, the South African government has been quick to caution against labelling this surge in violence as xenophobia because "preliminary evidence indicates that these acts may be driven primarily by criminality".

Al Jazeera requested comment repeatedly from the office of South Africa's president of the department of home affairs and the South African police services, but recieved no response. 

Labelling the violence as just crime creates a false debate, said Biniam Misgun, lecturer in the School of Sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban.

"When you see a group intentionally attacked and their shops looted because they are foreign, then you cannot just say it's criminality driving this," Misgun told Al Jazeera. 

Misgun's assertions that these are hate crimes are corroborated by statistics. In 2011, around 120 foreign nationals were killed, of whom five were burnt alive. In 2012, 140 foreigners were killed and 250 others injured in violent attacks across the country, reported the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in Johannesburg.




http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/06/201365124758700631.html

Incredible

honestly i have never liked that country ,too much violence and bloodshed.the crime rate over there is just too high.