Amidst growing concerns over the ongoing violent attacks and killings of African migrant workers and businessmen in South Africa, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has enlisted the help of its counterpart, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to mobilise action against Xenophobia.
The labour movement asked the South African government to ensure that perpetrators of the heinous act are punished and families who have lost their loved ones, as well as workers duly compensated.
A letter signed by NLC President, Joe Ajaero, the labour centre blamed the South African security agencies of not doing enough to prevent the killing and destruction of property of Nigerians and other non citizens.
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NLC said that migrant workers must not be used as scapegoats for the crisis of social and economic inequalities brought upon the citizens by neo-liberal and capitalist policies in South Africa.
In the letter addressed to COSATU president, NLC said, "Our common enemy is not the migrant worker hawking goods in Soweto or mining in Rustenburg. Our common enemy is neoliberalism, capitalism's most vicious mask.
"It's failed government policies that failed to address the needs of workers and people but panders to profit.
"We therefore call upon you, our sister labour centre, to lend your powerful voice without equivocation and condemn these xenophobic attacks in the strongest terms, not as a mere press release but as a mass mobilisation, so that every trade union hall, every shop floor, and every picket line carries the message that an injury to one is an injury to all.
"We further demand that COSATU use its immense weight to pressure the South African government to take robust and immediate steps."
NLC said the passivity of the security forces in the face of these attacks amounted to complicity, adding that South African government should ensure, "the full deployment of state resources to protect migrant workers and their property"
"Perpetrators must be swiftly prosecuted, and families who have lost their loved ones, as well as workers who have lost their livelihoods, must be compensated by the state," it said.
NLC letter reads in part, "We bring you fraternal greetings from Nigerian workers and the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). We extend our hand of solidarity and kinship to you as co-travellers in the long and bitter struggle against exploitation, racial capitalism, and neoliberal savagery.
"We write to you today with the urgent alarm of a fellow labour centre that is watching with horror as the ghosts of nativism and xenophobia once again stalk the streets of South Africa.
"We are compelled by the blood of our fellow black workers; Zimbabwean, Malawian, Mozambican, Somali, Nigerian, and others; who are being murdered, not for any crime, but for the sin of being African in Africa."
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