JOHANNESBURG/GENEVA: Twelve people were arrested overnight as anti-foreigner attacks in South Africa spread to parts of downtown Johannesburg, police said Friday.
Several shops and cars owned by foreigners were torched overnight in continued anti-immigrant attacks but another city that had seen the worst violence was calm.
Police spokesman Col. Jay Naicker said no violence was reported in the coastal city of Durban, where the violence began.
“Twelve suspects were arrested for trying to break into foreign-owned shops,” said police spokesman Lt. Col. Lungelo Dlamini.
In a Johannesburg suburb, foreigners afraid to return to their homes took refuge in a community center.
In neighboring Zimbabwe, police were involved in minor clashes with dozens of protesters demonstrating at the South African Embassy against the anti-immigrant attacks. Protesters handed over a petition to embassy officials demanding an end to the violence in South Africa.
It was the latest incident in a wave of immigrant-targeted violence that began earlier this month in the port city of Durban, leaving at least six people dead.
According to local reports, the protesters from a local hostel demanded foreign nationals leave South Africa, setting cars alight and clashing with police.
No injuries were reported, said Dlamini.
The scene remained tense Friday morning, with hostel-dwellers telling reporters they wanted immigrants to know they were not welcome in the country.
President Jacob Zuma has condemned the violence in Parliament.
“No amount of frustration or anger can ever justify the attacks on foreign nationals and the looting of their shops,” he said Thursday night.
Locals and African immigrants in South African often compete for scarce jobs, making them a target for violence and intimidation.
Early this year, foreign shopkeepers in and around Soweto, south of Johannesburg, were forced to vacate their premises after violence and looting broke out.
In 2008, 62 people were killed in xenophobic violence in Johannesburg townships.
The United Nations on Friday expressed concern at the latest round of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, saying the violence had displaced 5,000 people.
At least six people have been killed with the unrest spreading from the eastern port city of Durban to the country’s financial hub Johannesburg.
“In South Africa, xenophobic attacks over the last three weeks have... displaced over 5,000 foreign nationals, including refugees and asylum seekers,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said, adding it was “extremely concerned.”
“We would like to underscore that those affected in these xenophobic attacks are refugees and asylum seekers who were forced to leave their countries due to war and persecution,” it said.
“They are in South Africa because they need protection.”
In the past two weeks, shops and homes owned by Somalis, Ethiopians, Malawians and other immigrants in Durban and surrounding townships have been targeted, forcing families to flee to camps protected by armed guards.
Foreign-owned shops in the Jeppestown area of central Johannesburg have also been attacked.
Locals and African immigrants in South Africa often compete for scarce jobs, making them a target for violence and intimidation.
Anti-foreigner attacks have happened off and on for the past decade in South Africa. In 2008, 62 people were killed in xenophobic violence in Johannesburg townships.
Anti-immigrant attacks spread to downtown Johannesburg
Anti-immigrant attacks spread to downtown Johannesburg
World copper rush promises new riches for Zambia
CAPE TOWN: Five years after becoming Africa’s first Covid-era debt defaulter, Zambia is seeing a dramatic turnaround in fortunes as major powers vie for access to its vast reserves of copper.
Surging demand from the artificial intelligence, green energy and defense sectors has exponentially boosted demand for the workhorse metal that underpins power grids, data centers and electric vehicles.
The scramble for copper exposes geopolitical rivalries as industrial heavyweights — including China, the United States, Canada, Europe, India and Gulf states — compete to secure supplies.
“We have the investors back,” President Hakainde Hichilema told delegates at the African Mining Indaba conference on Monday, saying that more than $12 billion had flowed into the sector since 2022.
The politically stable country is Africa’s second-largest copper producer, after the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo, and the world’s eighth, according to the US Geological Survey.
The metal, needed for solar panels and wind turbines, generates about 15 percent of Zambia’s GDP and more than 70 percent of export earnings.
Output rose eight percent last year to more than 890,000 metric tons and the government aims to triple production within a decade.
Mining is driving growth that is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to reach 5.2 percent in 2025 and 5.8 percent this year, which places Zambia among the continent’s faster-growing economies.
“The seeds are sprouting and the harvest is coming,” Hichilema said, touting a planned nationwide geological survey to map untapped deposits.
But the rapid expansion of the heavily polluting industry has also led to warnings about risks to local communities and concerns of “pit-to-port” extraction, in which raw copper is shipped directly abroad with little domestic refining.
’Dramatic new chapter’
“We need to be aware of the potential for history to repeat itself,” said Daniel Litvin, founder of the Resource Resolutions group that promotes sustainable development, referring to the colonial-era scramble for Africa’s resources.
There is a risk that elites will be enriched at the expense of the broader population, while “narratives of partnership” offered by major powers can mask underlying self-interest, he said.
Chinese firms have long dominated the sector in Zambia and control major stakes in key mines and smelters, cementing Beijing’s early-mover advantage.
Another major player is Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Zambia’s largest corporate taxpayer.
Investors from India and the Gulf are expanding their footprint, and the United States is returning to the market after largely pulling out decades ago.
Washington, which has been stockpiling copper, this month launched a $12 billion “Project Vault” public-private initiative to secure critical minerals, part of an effort to reduce reliance on China.
In September, the US Trade and Development Agency announced a $1.4 million grant to a Metalex Commodities subsidiary, Metalex Africa, to expand operations in Zambia.
“We are at the beginning of what is going to unfold to be a dramatic new chapter in the way that the free world sources and trades in critical minerals,” US energy secretary adviser Mike Kopp said at Mining Indaba.
Sweeping US tariffs introduced last year helped send copper prices soaring to record highs, as companies rushed to buy both semi-finished and refined stocks.
Cost of rush
“The risk is that this great power competition becomes a race to secure supply on terms that serve markets and not the people in producer countries,” said Deprose Muchena, a program director at the Open Society Foundation.
Despite its mineral wealth, more than 70 percent of Zambia’s 21 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
“The world is waking up to Zambia’s copper. But Zambia has been living with copper and its consequences for a century,” Muchena told AFP.
Environmental damage caused by mining has long plagued Zambia’s copper belt.
In February 2025, a burst tailings dam at a Chinese-owned mine near Kitwe, about 285 kilometers (180 miles) north of Lusaka, spilled millions of liters of acidic waste.
Toxins entered a tributary feeding the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a major source of drinking water. Zambian farmers have filed an $80 billion lawsuit.
“Whether this boom is different depends on whether governance, rights, and community agency are at the center, not just supply chain security,” Muchena said.
