{"id":237231,"date":"2022-09-15T12:57:20","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T10:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township\/"},"modified":"2022-09-15T12:57:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T10:57:20","slug":"immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants\u2019 homes torched in Plettenberg Bay township"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/msoja_nganu.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Msoja Nganu\u2019s home in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay, was torched on Tuesday night while he was asleep. He jumped from the second floor window behind him. Photo: Siphokazi Mnyobe<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On Tuesday night two homes rented by immigrants were torched in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay.<\/li>\n<li>This comes after dozens of immigrants were forced from their homes on Monday night, when local residents conducted door-to-door searches for foreign nationals.<\/li>\n<li>South African landlords and some community members have protested against the xenophobic violence.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On Tuesday night, two homes rented by immigrants in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay, were torched.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Peter Mukonda, originally from Malawi, said his shack was set alight while he and his girlfriend were sleeping inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI woke up and kicked the door open. I called for help from my landlady and neighbours,\u201d said Mukonda. They managed to extinguish the fire and save his shack, but he is now too afraid to sleep at home.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Mukonda had been forced out of his shack along with dozens of other immigrants ejected<a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/immigrants-forced-out-of-their-homes-in-plettenberg-bay\/\"> from their homes<\/a> by South Africans who conducted door-to-door searches hunting for foreign nationals.<\/p>\n<p>Many, including Mukonda, spent the night in a community hall. Earlier Monday evening, police used rubber bullets to avert a confrontation between xenophobic vigilantes and immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>After a community meeting on Tuesday, Mukonda had returned to his shack, thinking things had cooled off.<\/p>\n<p>Msonja Nganu, from Tanzania, also had his house torched that night while he was asleep upstairs. He had to jump from a second-floor window to escape the fire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was lucky the smoke did not kill me first. I am also grateful my children were not here. My passport has been destroyed in the fire. They first closed my barber shop and now my home. I am left with nothing and it hurts so much,\u201d said Nganu.<\/p>\n<p>Local landlords of immigrants are furious.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe houses torched are ours, South Africans. They are now telling us to evict immigrants or we will lose our houses,\u201d said a landlord, who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n<p>Mukonda\u2019s landlady, Siphokazi Patse Mzayifani, said immigrant tenants \u201care like family now\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The landlords say they are further aggrieved after the Plettenberg Bay Magistrates Court on Wednesday released a man said to be the leader of the operation to chase out immigrants. He is accused of assaulting Zukiswa Mdlalani with pepper spray in her home.<\/p>\n<p>He was released without bail on a warning not to interfere with witnesses. He is to appear again in court on 19 October.<\/p>\n<p>Xabiso Gungulu, leading the landlords and community members against the operation to drive out immigrants, said: \u201cThe operation started as a campaign to chase drug dealers out of the community, but whenever the operation gets a tip-off that South Africans are selling drugs, nothing is being done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A group of residents and landlords went to the police station after the community meeting on Tuesday to voice their opposition to the xenophobic violence that had occurred on Monday, and also to show their support for Mdlalani after she was assaulted.<\/p>\n<p>Mdlalani said the law must take its course. \u201cMy children are traumatised but we are not shaken. I could not allow them to intimidate me and I was not going to let them get away with bullying me and my family. I had to exercise my rights and open the case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Southern Cape police spokesperson Captain Malcom Pojie said two cases of arson were opened for investigation and also a case of public violence.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/siphokazi_mnyobe\/kwanokuthula_protest.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Landlords and some community members protest outside the police station on Tuesday against residents driving immigrants out of their community.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Msoja Nganu\u2019s home in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay, was torched on Tuesday night while he was asleep. He jumped from the second floor window behind him. Photo: Siphokazi Mnyobe On Tuesday night two homes rented by immigrants were torched in Kwanokuthula, Plettenberg Bay. This comes after dozens of immigrants were forced from their homes on Monday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-237231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/immigrants-homes-torched-in-plettenberg-bay-township.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}