South Africa's stature battered by migrant killings

By Pascal Fletcher

DAKAR (Reuters) - South Africa's aspirations to lead the continent are being shredded by the xenophobic mobs who have hacked, shot and beaten to death more than 40 African migrants in the land where apartheid was defeated.

The killing of Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Nigerians and other Africans by machete-wielding gangs of South Africans has been greeted with horror and outrage in states which once welcomed South African fugitives from racial persecution.

From Maputo to Lusaka to Luanda and further north, African populations that gave refuge to the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) are shocked to see their own people being slain and brutalised in ANC-ruled South Africa.

"If South Africa could remember what we did for them during the apartheid regime, they shouldn't be doing that to us," said Emmanuel Efuk, a resident of Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos.

The mobs accuse the immigrants of depriving South Africans of scarce jobs and fuelling crime.

Governments, civil society groups and commentators say the violence is soiling the image South Africa would like to project as a beacon of racial harmony and a continental peacemaker 14 years after apartheid ended.

"This appalling hunting of foreigners which stains the emblematic land of South Africa must be lived as an unspeakable shame, a slap against the struggle of (anti-apartheid hero and former South African President Nelson) Mandela," the Senegalese private daily Sud Quotidien said in a commentary this week.

Many see South Africa under President Thabo Mbeki stumbling in its aspirations to represent Africa in world forums, such as the U.N. Security Council, where Pretoria is campaigning for a permanent seat against other contenders like Egypt and Nigeria.