Home FEATURES South African President Vows To Deal With ‘Criminals’ That Killed Nigerians

South African President Vows To Deal With ‘Criminals’ That Killed Nigerians

New South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa

South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed that he will bring to justice, some miscreants who have been responsible for the killing of foreigners, including Nigerians in his country.

Answering reporters’ questions today, shortly after a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Ramaphosa emphasized that the frequent attacks and killing of Nigerians living in South Africa, have been “as a result of criminal activity among our own people, which we are focusing on.

“I want to state here and now that South Africans do not have any form of negative disposition or hatred towards Nigerians and in the main, Nigerians in South Africa and a number of places of our country live side by side. They cooperate very well and some of them are in the corporate structures of our various companies and some are traders and some are into a number of things.

“So, I want to dispel this notion that when a Nigerian loses his or her life in South Africa, it is as a result of an intentional action by South Africans against Nigerians. That is simply not true.

“You will know that South Africa has a number of challenges, one of which is criminality and which is all pervasive. We have over a number of years been bringing down a number of crimes in our country and we are working on a concerted basis to ensure that crime does come down. “And the criminality that we have is borne out of a number of factors, one of those is unemployment among people: 27 percent of South Africans are unemployed which amount to about nine million and most of these are young people. Poverty is still all pervasive in South Africa and this emanate front our very sad history of apartheid misrule.

“There is still inequality in South Africa; a few people are extremely rich and majority of our people are very poor and all these factors and other social factors have contributed to the high levels of crime. And criminality is something like I said that we are focusing on, doing everything to bring it down.

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“And on top of everything else, people in various parts of the country who get engulfed in acts of criminality, majority of them are South Africans and some of them will be foreign nationals and will either be Nigerians and other people from other countries.

“These are acts of criminality and I want to end by saying that, when we were involved in our struggle, we said that the South Africa that we are fighting for is the South Africa which will regard everyone who lives in South Africa on the basis of equality, respect for human right. And we said that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it.

“So, the Nigerians who are in South Africa are also part of our community. They can never be targeted on an intentional basis as people who must either be attacked or killed, and when that happens l will like all of us to see that as an act of criminality which in the main, affect many South Africans in the various parts of our country.

“Our government is determined to bring the levels of criminality down and also to go after those who perpetrate these acts of criminality. So that anyone who attacks anyone in South Africa will be pursued with the might of the law to make sure they are brought to justice.”