Three foreign nationals killed in South Africa 'revenge attacks'
South African police deployed reinforcements on Monday to a farming area where community members killed three foreign nationals in random revenge attacks after the murder of a local man in a bar fight.
Specialised units were sent to the Valencia citrus-growing area in the Eastern Cape after the spate of attacks on Sunday and Monday, provincial police said in a statement.
'It is believed that these unlawful acts of revenge attacks began with an incident in which a local resident was allegedly murdered following a fight between a group of local residents and foreign nationals outside a tavern on Saturday,' it said.
Afterwards community members 'took to the streets and reportedly attacked foreign nationals,' it said, adding the attacks were carried out 'randomly'.
Besides the death of the young South African, 'The incident has claimed three lives, and left at least 10 people injured,' the statement said.
Police would not give the nationalities of the foreign nationals killed in the violence but several local media reported they were Zimbabweans.
'We can't assume that they are coming from a certain country,' police spokesperson Warrant Officer Majola Nkohli told AFP.
Reportedly thousands of foreigners were in the area, near Addo about 50km north of Gqeberha, for the citrus-picking season.
More than 100 had taken shelter in a local police station, it said.
Southern Africa's strongest economy draws thousands of foreign nationals seeking work who are regularly targeted with xenophobic harassment, discrimination and even violence.
Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1
Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
eNCA
an hour ago
- eNCA
27 killed as Israeli army opens fire near Gaza aid point
GAZA CITY - Twenty-seven people were killed in southern Gaza on Tuesday as Israeli troops opened fire near a US-backed aid centre, with the military saying the incident was under investigation. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres decried the deaths of Palestinians seeking food aid as "unacceptable" and the UN rights chief condemned attacks on civilians as "a war crime", after a similar shooting near the same site on Sunday. Gaza's civil defence agency said that "27 people were killed and more than 90 injured in the massacre targeting civilians who were waiting for American aid in the Al-Alam area of Rafah", in the territory's south. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal earlier told AFP the deaths occurred "when Israeli forces opened fire with tanks and drones", while Israel said troops fired towards "suspects" who had ignored warning shots. The International Committee of the Red Cross gave the same death toll but without mentioning the Israeli forces. The organisation said Gazans face an "unprecedented scale and frequency of recent mass casualty incidents". The latest shooting occurred about a kilometre (just over half a mile) from a centre run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which Israel has worked with to implement a new aid distribution mechanism. The United Nations and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the group over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives. At a hospital in southern Gaza, the family of Reem al-Akhras, who was killed in the shooting at Rafah's the Al-Alam roundabout, were beside themselves with grief. "She went to bring us some food, and this is what happened to her," her son Zain Zidan said. AFP | Paz PIZARRO, Omar KAMAL, Cléa PÉCULIER Akhras's husband, Mohamed Zidan, said "every day, unarmed people" were being killed. "This is not humanitarian aid; it's a trap." The Israeli military maintains that its forces do not prevent Gazans from collecting aid. Army spokesman Effie Defrin said the Israeli soldiers had fired at suspects who "were approaching in a way that endangered" the troops, adding the "incident is being investigated". - 'Unconscionable' - Rania al-Astal, 30, said she had gone to Al-Alam with her husband to try to get food. "The shooting began intermittently around 5:00 am. Every time people approached Al-Alam roundabout, they were fired upon," she told AFP. "But people didn't care and rushed forward all at once -- that's when the army began firing heavily." Fellow witness Mohammed al-Shaer, 44, said at first "the Israeli army fired shots into the air, then began shooting directly at the people". GHF said the operations at its site went ahead safely on Tuesday. A military statement said troops saw some people "deviating from the designated access routes" to the Al-Alam aid point, and fired warning shots. When "the suspects failed to retreat, additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects", it added. The previous shooting on Sunday killed at least 31 people at the Al-Alam roundabout, rescuers said. A military source acknowledged "warning shots were fired towards several suspects". AFP | The world body's human rights chief Volker Turk called such attacks "unconscionable". "Attacks directed against civilians constitute a grave breach of international law and a war crime," he said. The White House said it was "looking into the veracity" of the reports from Rafah. Israel has come under mounting pressure to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where people are facing severe shortages after Israel imposed a more than two-month blockade. The blockade was recently eased, but the aid community has urged Israel to allow in more food, faster. AFP | - The US-backed group named a new chairman on Tuesday, while a consulting firm that helped create it said it had terminated its contract with GHF. Israel has stepped up its offensive in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war. Apart from the aid centre incident, Gaza's civil defence agency reported 19 killed in Israeli attacks on Tuesday. The army said three of its soldiers had been killed in northern Gaza, bringing the number of Israeli troops killed in the territory since the start of the war to 424. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 4,240 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 54,510, mostly civilians. Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Daily Maverick
7 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Chief Rabbi Goldstein abuses legal and religious concepts in attack on Ramaphosa
On 21 May 2025, President Donald Trump's Oval Office was yet again turned into the set of a reality television show livestreamed into the homes of many millions of viewers all over the world. The meeting between the US president and South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa quickly shifted gear from the initial pleasantries to spectacular political theatre as Trump played video material purporting to be evidence of a 'white genocide' in South Africa. This included footage of Julius Malema in a packed football stadium chanting 'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer' and a 'cemetery with 1,000 white crosses' that turned out to be a memorial commemorating the murder of two farmers. As this political theatre was taking place in the White House, a real-time genocide was unfolding in Gaza with Israel's relentless bombardment, its humanitarian blockade of food, water and medical aid and its refusal to comply with international court rulings. In the face of these developments, and an intensification of international pressure and criticism of Israel, South Africa's chief rabbi, Warren Goldstein, decided it was time to respond. In his Facebook video message Goldstein accused Ramaphosa of many things, including allowing a 'South African genocide' to take place. Although the chief rabbi refrained from using the term 'white genocide', and acknowledged that all South Africans are victims of violent crime, he appeared to endorse the key talking points of Trump's Maga movement and South African right-wing, white nationalist agendas. This played right into the accusations of 'white genocide' plied by right-wing Afrikaner organisations to discredit the South African government's transformation policies, especially its land reform and employment equity programmes. But the chief rabbi went much further than these white nationalists. In his relentless attack on the South African President, he insisted that the 'shame' and 'humiliation' that Ramaphosa had experienced in the Oval Office on 21 May 2025 was 'divine retribution' for South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This is how the chief rabbi described how God choreographed what happened in the White House meeting: 'As I watched the White House spectacle unfold, as I watched President Ramaphosa literally squirm in his seat, visibly uncomfortable, humiliated, as President Trump accused him of genocide in his own country, I couldn't help but think, I'm not a prophet and I do not presume to know the will of God, and yet the thought kept crossing my mind – this moment, this humiliation, felt biblical. It felt like divine retribution. It felt like justice for a different earlier sin. 'Because Ramaphosa and the ANC stood on a different international stage and falsely accused the Jewish state, the State of Israel, of genocide, a lie, a libel, a defamation of an entire nation. And now, in front of the whole world, they themselves are being accused of genocide. This time a true genocide demonstrated by the cold, brutal facts of a murder rate spiralling out of control. The blood of countless victims on their hands and their total inability to protect South Africans of any race or background.' In this wide-ranging video message Goldstein held Ramaphosa personally accountable for Malema's chants of 'Kill the Boer, kill the farmer', claiming that he 'has never publicly condemned the chant as hate speech, not even in the Oval Office when he had every opportunity and motive to do so'. This was followed by an assault on the South African Constitutional Court for not ruling that Malema's chants are hate speech: 'This judgment casts a shadow on the integrity and legacy of the Constitutional Court and makes a mockery of their role as the guardians of human rights in South Africa.' Although the violent crime statistics in South Africa are truly shocking, Goldstein's claims of a 'South African genocide' radically dilutes and relativises the legal definition and meaning of the term. This constitutes a dangerous trivialisation of genocidal catastrophes, including the Holocaust. It thereby threatens to undermine the very precise meaning of genocide, a concept which was introduced into international law after the Holocaust by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish Polish lawyer. Lemkin's concept helped establish the 1948 Genocide Convention, which legally defines the act of genocide. As the son of a German Jewish refugee whose entire family was murdered in Auschwitz and Riga, I appreciate the importance of Lemkin's precise definition of genocide. Using the notion of a 'South African genocide' to refer to a violent crime crisis undermines this precision. Most international law experts would agree that Hamas perpetrated horrific war crimes against civilians in Israel on 7 October 2023. At the same time, there is currently a growing consensus among Holocaust and genocide scholars that the Israeli military is indeed perpetrating genocide in Gaza. This assessment draws on the very specific criteria that Lemkin used to define the crime of genocide which, according to the Genocide Convention, consists of any of five 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. These acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births and forcibly transferring children out of the group. In terms of this very precise definition, genocide is a crime of special intent (dolus specialis) that deliberately targets a protected group. How can the unacceptably high violent crime levels that impact on all South Africans possibly constitute genocide in terms of this definition? Just as legal concepts need to be used with precision, one would also expect that the use of religious concepts needs to meet stringent definitions. It is therefore surprising to discover the flagrant abuse of religious concepts by the chief rabbi when he claimed that the shame and humiliation experienced by Ramaphosa in the White House was 'divine retribution' for an earlier sin – taking Israel to the ICJ. I will quote a lengthy passage from the video that conveys the lengths to which the chief rabbi was prepared to go to stretch the meanings of both 'genocide' and biblical notions of divine justice: '… It felt like what our sages called Midah Keneged Midah, measure for measure, a precise justice, a reckoning. And as that thought took hold, another verse came to mind. I kept hearing the words of Genesis in 12:3: 'Those who bless you will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed.' 'President Ramaphosa and the ANC cursed Israel, and now it feels as though they are being cursed. You can feel it in the air, in the sense of decay and despair, you can feel the weight of a divine curse settling on this Presidency… In the heavenly court, you will stand accused of presiding over the human suffering of all those who were murdered on your watch. The King of All Kings will ask you what you did to stop the carnage, the genocide… and you will be held eternally accountable for every moment of human suffering you caused through your callous neglect, through your omissions and commissions…' What is happening here? Why is the chief rabbi, the spiritual leader of South African Jews, so brazenly abusing the specific definitions and meanings of legal and religious concepts to denounce the President and the Constitutional Court? Is it simply to score political points? How will such divisive speech, which is uttered on behalf of the whole Jewish community, make Jews any more secure in South Africa? It is quite conceivable that the chief rabbi – like so many other defenders of Israel's actions in Gaza – is becoming increasingly defensive and desperate as international public opinion and Western governments become more critical of Israel's actions in Gaza. The chief rabbi's false and unconsidered accusations and condemnations appear to be a radical displacement and distraction from the horrific realities of a genocide unfolding daily in Gaza. DM
IOL News
9 hours ago
- IOL News
Airbnb scams: New book explores thriving criminal activity on big tech platforms
Airbnb is the world's largest accommodation-sharing platform. Image: Freepik Big tech sharing economy platforms like Airbnb and Uber are marketed as trustworthy, but a new book by a South African media scholar argues that they are highly vulnerable to scammers who spread delusive speech (a form of disinformation, designed to deceive by criminal intent). Julie Reid draws from first-hand accounts and over 600 cases from around the world of victims lured into scams or physical danger by fake Airbnb reviews and listings, providing a detailed case study. How do the scams work? Airbnb is the world's largest accommodation-sharing platform. It connects property owners who want to rent out their homes with travellers looking for alternatives to traditional hotels. The company recently expanded its offering and now facilitates the booking of other services like personal trainers or caterers along with accommodation rentals. Airbnb scams happen in several ways. The most obvious is the phantom listing scam. The scammer constructs a fake but attractive listing on Airbnb and accepts payments from unsuspecting guests. It's only when guests arrive at the address that they discover the property doesn't exist. Scammers have also learnt to navigate around Airbnb's review system. Fake positive reviews are produced by scam host networks, making them appear to be authentic. Bait and switch scams are also common. Here the scam 'host' contacts the guest on check-in day claiming the reserved property is suddenly unavailable. They offer alternative accommodation, which the guest later discovers is not as good as the original property they've paid for (which is often fictional). The guest pays for a premium rental but is forced to stay in a property that might be unsafe, unclean, or missing amenities. Scam hosts use misleading, plagiarised, or AI-generated property images and fake descriptions along with fake personal profiles and aliases. Delusive tactics also redirect guests away from the secure Airbnb payment portal to alternative payment methods. The scammer disappears with the money. But the danger isn't limited to financial crimes. The platform's business model is premised on staying in a stranger's private property, which can put guests' personal safety at risk. Criminal hosts can lure targets into dangerous environments. Once checked in, guests are isolated from public view, housed in a property to which the host has access. I've assessed multiple cases where Airbnb guests were assaulted, robbed with no signs of forced entry, raped, murdered, made victims of sexploitation, extortion or human trafficking, or held hostage. Julie Reid is a professor at the University of South Africa Image: The Conversation How does the disinformation work? I consider delusive speech a subset of disinformation because it presents intentionally misleading content at scale. But it differs from disinformation in its intentions. It isn't done to promote a particular cause or gain ideological, military, or political advantage. Delusive speech is motivated purely by criminal intent or nefarious financial gain. Delusive speech works by hiding in plain sight on platforms we think we can trust, like Airbnb, Uber and others. Often, it's indistinguishable from honest and genuine content. When users browse Airbnb listings for holiday accommodation, they're presented with numerous options. A fake property listing looks, sounds and feels exactly the same as a genuine one. This happens on a platform that has built its brand narrative around the concept of trust. Scammers exploit these digital contexts of pre-established trust. When users log on to popular e-commerce or sharing economy platforms, they're already primed to pay for something. It becomes relatively easy for scammers to delude targets into parting with their money. What can Airbnb do about it? Airbnb already has several trust and safety mechanisms in place. They include rapid response teams, an expert Trust and Safety Advisory Coalition and travel insurance for guests. The company claims to be trying to stop fake listings with machine learning technology. Sadly, none of these mechanisms work perfectly. While Airbnb promises to verify properties and host identities, my analysis exposes flaws in these systems. Scammers easily bypass verification tiers through aliases, forged documents and AI-generated material. Airbnb has admitted it needs to address the failures of its verification processes. My analysis uncovered how scammed guests are routinely denied the opportunity to post reviews of problematic rentals. Opaque terms of service and content policies allow Airbnb customer service agents and executives to justify censoring negative but honest guest reviews. This means dangerous and fraudulent activity goes publicly unreported and unreviewed, leaving future guests vulnerable. I argue that Airbnb's review curation mechanisms should be revamped according to internationally recognised human rights frameworks that protect freedom of speech. This would allow for more honest accounts of guest experiences and create a safer online environment. Perhaps the most common complaint I encountered was that Airbnb doesn't remove offending listings from its platform, even after a scammed guest provides evidence that the listing was posted by a fraudster. Airbnb must develop an urgent protocol for swiftly removing offending listings when discovered, to protect future guests from falling victim to the same scam trap. What can users do to protect themselves? Travellers can protect themselves by being extra cautious. Ask around. Seek recommendations from people you know and trust, and who can verify that the property you are booking actually exists and that the host is trustworthy. If that isn't an option, consider an established hotel instead, but book directly with the hotel and not via third party sites like where listings can easily be faked. Check on Google Street View to make sure the property is where it claims to be. Either way, have a Plan B in case things go wrong. Prepare ahead of your trip by deciding what you will do if you find yourself in an unsafe situation. And always, always, buy travel insurance.
