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Know your history, says Zuma President attributes xenophobia to lack of understanding on how freedom was attained Peter Ramothwala, The New Age, Johannesburg, 21 April 2015 President Jacob Zuma has attributed the recent xenophobic attacks to a failure of educating South Africans about how democracy was attained. Zuma was speaking at the stakeholder forum in Luthuli House yesterday that brought together voices of African compatriots against xenophobia attacks. "The culture of violence was not addressed after 1994. We fought the apartheid regime with violence. We didn't explain to people who assisted us how we attained democracy. We failed to explain what freedom and democracy means. We need books about the struggle, rights and responsibility - we need to start afresh," he said. He appealed to media not to call people on TV everyday to criticise the government. "We need people to tell educational stories. Media should be patriotic. You are perpetuating violence - you need to respect others and have limits. Social media users across the country should also refrain from circulating graphic content relating to the xenophobic attacks as it is fuelling hate speech and fear," he said. The president said the recent picture of slain Mozambican national Emmanuel Sithole was a pure "criminal act" not linked to xenophobic attacks. A total of seven people were killed last week, three South Africans and four foreign nationals in a week that caused alarm to thousands in the country, Africa and the world. Hordes of foreign nationals have been displaced and others killed following a wave of xenophobia that engulfed Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng. Zuma said South Africa's struggle against apartheid was attained with the help of other countries. "We went to those countries without valid papers. They tolerated us and never asked us why we were running away from our country. "They sympathised with us and we worked with ordinary citizens who helped us to fight apartheid." "Foreign national leaders called for the release of South African leaders because they took their struggle as their own. "What has gone wrong, who is black and white? Our focus has suddenly moved away from building a South Africa of how peace and stability can be achieved," he said. Zuma is to host consultative meetings with stakeholders to discuss the country's migration policy and how various sectors can work with government to promote orderly migration and good relations between SA citizens and other nationals. The president has established a ministerial task team to help quell the violence and to bring the situation to normality in areas affected by violence against foreign nationals. The team comprises ministers from the justice peace crime prevention and security cluster assisted by the ministers of small business development, trade and industry and social development. [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
