'If these matters are not resolved speedily, we could face similar uprisings to last year'
Anthony Muteti worked tirelessly to improve his community. He started a development forum to find jobs for young people and was instrumental in having the streets cleared of raw sewage.
But this week Muteti, his wife, children and about 70 other families who hail from Zimbabwe and Malawi were chased from their homes "like dogs".
The men and women lived in Hout Bay's Imizimo Yethu informal settlement near Cape Town. After three Malawian men were arrested for the rape of a three-year-old girl last Friday, people turned on the families. They were given a few hours to pack their bags and "get lost".
The uproar came barely a week after an estimated 3000 Zimbabwean men and women were attacked at Stofland informal settlement in De Doorns, also in the Western Cape. Similar attacks took place in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats just months ago.
Now experts have warned that xenophobic violence could spread - possibly sparking a repeat of last year's catastrophe in which thousands of people were displaced and more than 60 killed.
Dr Lawrence Mgbangson of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in the Western Cape said South Africans took out their service delivery and unemployment frustrations on vulnerable foreigners .
"If these matters are not resolved speedily, we could face similar uprisings to last year," he said. "It is possible that it could spread."
The Western Cape manager of the South African Human Rights Commission, Leonardo Goosen, said that tensions still existed in communities where refugees were re-integrated after last year's xenophobic attacks.
In De Doorns, community members accused Zimbabwean labourers of stealing jobs by working in the region's vineyards for lower wages. A mob ransacked homes, demolished shacks and chased away the labourers. They are living on a sports field in De Doorns.
"While we were preparing to go to work we saw a group of about 50 men breaking down people's houses, stealing computers, blankets and television sets. There was also a group of women who clapped, whistled and cheered them on. We took women and children and fled to the police station," said one of the men, Chaka Masakwa.
Police arrested 23 people in connection with the attacks - and their first appearance in court attracted an angry mob of about 1000 people.
Braam Hanekom, from PASSOP (People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty), said foreigners were usually attacked by communities who wanted to attract the government's attention - and "unfortunately it works; the government has been responding to that pressure".
Hout Bay police spokes man Inspector Tanya Lesch said the unrest in Imizimo Yethu was not a "xenophobic problem", and related only to crime. But Muteti, who teaches high school on the Cape Flats, said: "I feel like a double refugee. First I fled from the political instability in my country and now I am fleeing from angry South Africans."
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