Violence in all its forms must be condemned. This particular kind of violence against foreigners must be condemned even more vehemently. But when the emotions are down, and sobriety and objectivity back, South Africans must take stock about what went wrong.

Progroms, as Karima rightfully used the word, have always been occassioned by perceived or real economic grievances. As South Africans for whatever reasons we do not have the resources to accommodate all the poor people from the rest of Africa.

We have through neglect or ommission pitted our own poor against the poor illegal immigrants for scarce & dwindling resources. Elsewhere refugees stay in camps and receive aid from the UN, Oxfam, and other aid agencies. No country in the world in which you can just come in, and set up shop and sell cocaine the following day unhindered by police. This is the real world, controls are not a luxury but a necessity. The government has resoundingly failed us.

Every African country has illegal and legal immigrants in South Africa. This is too much for any government anywhere in the world. But it does not allow us to kill foreigners.

In France , and Germany and UK there are politicians that run on the anti-immigrant policies. South Africa does not have this, which is a good sign. This week Italy on Euronews blamed Romanians for 35% of all the local crimes in Rome. We are not alone with this kind of problem. The US fights a losing battle against South American illegal immigrants. The Spaniards are losing against the tide of illegal West Africans. The Chinese illegals pitch up suffocated to death in goods containers in the UK.

Ironically, the shanty towns have mushroomed after 1994. South Africa had its own rural-urban migration problems that were triggered by the collapse of the Apartheid state. For the rest of Africa, South Africa is the Eldorado: the land of infinite opportunities. But South Africa is a capitalist state: where very rich people live side by side with abjectly poor people. Who can afford not to be capitalist in a post 9/11 and paranoid global village?

While in the short term the solution is the shooting of rioters and protection of civilians, in the long term we need controls to stem the tide of poor immigrants and put our house in order. If you have prepared diunner for six, you cannot accommodate 600. Zimbabwe is not our problem, all we can do is help where we can.

The false idea that South Africans were hosted by the rest of Africa does not help either. South Africans didnt send its poor en masse to Zambia, Tanzania, Angola and Uganda to compete with the host country poor. We are not dealing here with political exile but with illegal economic migration. And we need to be sober minded and tackle the problem and not compound it with ill-based political correctness.

The African Unity parliament must work out immigration protocols and regulations that will help us to solve this problem. We need scholars and intellectuals to help us with ideas on how to tackle illegal economic migration: a unique 21st century global problem.

And unfortunately we are a nation baptised in violence. Violence has been a way of life in South Africa since Jan van Riebeeck built a garrison to defend the Dutch and Shaka Zulu started his Crushing wars. We have under 400 years of institutionalised violence. Our best exports to the world are army hardware and mercenaries. Whether we strike for better wages or HIV awareness somehow it must end in violent confrontation. Even a harmless child trespassing on a farm is shot to death in South Africa. Some get shot to death for a mere cellphone. This is unapologetically us.

And we have another kind of subtle violence, where we neglect the poor, and barricade ourselves into fotresses and enjoy inordiante fruits of economic success. It is neither wrong nor right, but it is a sure recipe that one day we shall all wake up and find ourselves besieged by the invisible poor people in our midst. We fail to see them, hear them or talk to them.

To the victims, I am humbly ashamed and we apologise unreservedly.