By Warda Meyer
Staff Reporter
A Zimbabwean national, forced to flee his home in Hout Bay's Imizamo Yethu informal settlement last weekend, says that without swift government intervention the situation will degenerate to violence.
Anthony Muteti, a political refugee, said he was still in shock after he and his family packed their belongings and moved out of Agget Street.
Muteti described how he watched the weekend drama unfold, saying he felt the same anger and pain as his South African neighbours when word spread that a child had been raped.
Three Malawian nationals have been arrested in connection with the rape of a three-year-old girl from the area.
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On the day of the arrests an angry mob broke down the suspects' shack and warned other foreign nationals to move out for their own safety.
"I have been living peacefully for two years with my wife and three children in the area and I never anticipated that the community would turn on all of us," he said.
Muteti said he was baffled that his neighbours were claiming that the incident was not an act of xenophobia.
"I would like to know what their definition of xenophobia is, because if I was not a foreigner I would still be living in my home," he said.
He said there had been tensions between foreigners and their Xhosa-speaking neighbours in the past, but people now feared for their lives.
"I will never go back there again, it will never be the same. How can they say that foreigners are the ones who do bad things in the area? I am a human being and a father, and as a father I deplore the actions of those who rape," he said.
He claimed three police vehicles were in the area the day he left the township, but the officers merely stood by and watched as they moved their belongings out of their homes.
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