South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor has blamed prejudice for the attacks carried out by his countrymen against foreign owned businesses.
He made this known a day after the South Africa High Commission in Nigeria was shut down over fears of reprisal attacks.
Speaking on the sidelines at the continental economic conference in Cape Town, Pandor stated that he’s working towards restoring calm to affected areas. He also revealed that he’s in constant contact with Nigerian authority towards.
“There is an Afrophobia we are sensing that exists, there is resentment and we need to address that,” Pandor said.
“There is a targeting of Africans from other parts of Africa, we can’t deny that. But, there is also criminality … because a lot of this is accompanied by theft,” she said, describing the attacks as a complex phenomenon whose root causes were not easy to define.