Johannesburg - The xenophobic attacks against foreign nationals was due to the failure to explain how freedom was won and what it entailed, President Jacob Zuma said at Luthuli House on Monday.
“We did not explain our struggle, for which we are partly to blame. We did not explain who helped us, we all failed, all of us as individuals, organisations, churches, individuals to explain what freedom means,” Zuma said at the meeting in Johannesburg that was attended by celebrities and sports administrators, condemning xenophobia.
“We did not attend to what we were supposed to attend to. We believed that the Constitution as a document will solve everything. That was a big mistake.”
South Africans were only told about what the Constitution allowed, and what it did not allow, the president said.
“We are reaping what we actually did not sow. We need to start afresh…we need to be united and reverse the damage we have done,” Zuma said, insisting to reporters that he was speaking as an ANC cadre and not as a statesman.
He called for unity and said South Africans were not killers.
“Those perpetrators do not represent us. South Africans are not killers. Let us have television and radio programmes, let writers write and educate people about South Africa.”
The pictures in the Sunday Times showing Mozambican national Emmanuel Sithole being stabbed was an act of criminals who rob people every day, he said.
Zuma said he believed Sithole’s killers were thugs on the prowl.
Sithole died after he was brutally stabbed in Alexandra at the weekend. Three people have since been arrested.
Earlier Premier Soccer League chairman Dr Irvin Khoza said that everything should be done to unearth those who are behind the xenophobic attacks.
“We should go to the Constitutional Court if it comes to that. I am not advocating for a state of emergency, I know we have a capable leadership, but something must be done. We have to unite against this because this is costly for us,” Khoza said.
Earlier Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba said that the national soccer team condemned the continued attacks on foreign nationals and the looting of shops.
“We, from the national team, want to pledge our big no to what is happening. Yes, we are South Africans, but we are also Africans,” Mashaba said.
Mashaba called on South Africans to embrace fellow African brothers and sisters.
“When we travel through the continent to play, we receive so much love from them. To all families who are affected by these acts and those who lost their loved ones, we send condolences. I hope the Almighty God spreads his hands over you,” he said.
The SA Football Association president Danny Jordaan said the country is bound to the rest of the continent.
“We are bound to other African countries when the CAF was formed in 1958, South Africa was part of that process,” he said.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has asked Safa to organise soccer matches between Bafana Bafana and neighbouring countries.
“We received the king’s request, and we will attend to it when we leave here,” said Jordaan.
“It was also in Lusaka, Zambia where the United Football Association of SA was formed, not here in South Africa, but in Lusaka. We say no to xenophobia, and we are going to do everything we can to help stop what is happening.”
ANA