A Catholic movement, Community of SANT’EGIDIO has pinned the Union Nations on the on-going xenophobia in South Africa describing the acts as contradiction of the tenets of globalisation.
Professor Marco Impagliazzo, president of the community has rung the alarm at the heat of the attacks which have left immigrants in South Africa including Malawians displaced.
He said, the community was finding it difficult to appreciate why some section of South Africans was being cruel and hostile on “fellow human beings.”
In what has become a global village, Impagliazzo argued, South Africans needed to realise the world, was now for sharing and living in “peace and harmony.”
“I am expressing my full solidarity with the Malawian people caught in these xenophobic attacks. The SANT’EGIDIO Community firmly condemns these attacks which are portraying like, it is not possible to live together,” he said.
Impagliazzo has made the observation on the sidelines of the launch of a youth empowerment project dubbed Youth for Peace, with which the community intends to use as vehicle for capacity building of youths into productive citizens.
Under the project, Malawian youths are being skilled to care for the elderly, who are growingly becoming a vulnerable population.
“A lot of our elderly persons are suffering without any care and attention … we need youths to render them a hand, hence the establishment of ‘Youth for Peace’.
The elderly aside, he said, even youths in the country were also being challenged by problems of loneliness, pressure of tuition fees, prospects of failure to complete studies and even pressure of broken families all of which also needed addressing.
Meanwhile, Malawi government is repatriating its nationals caught in these attacks and seeking refuge in camps; on the other hand, the South African government is deporting those in its detention facilities.