By A Correspondent- South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was on Friday booed at the National Sports stadium before he apologised to the African continent over the recent spate of xenophobic attacks on African immigrants in his country.

Ramaphosa said the recent flare-up of violence against foreign nationals goes against the spirit of oneness that was championed by pan-African stalwarts such as the late Mugabe and former South African leaders Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo.

He said:

“In the past two weeks, we as South Africans have been going through a challenging period. We have had acts of violence erupting in some parts of the country, some of which was directed at nationals from other African countries. This has led to the deaths and injuries of a number of people, some of whom were nationals from other countries and the majority were South Africans.

I stand before you as a fellow African to express my regret, and to apologise for what has happened in our country. What has happened in South Africa goes against the principles of the unity of the African people that President Mugabe and President Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and the great leaders of our continent stood for.”

Violence targeting foreigners in South Africa claimed 12 lives and 2 Zimbabweans died during the attacks.

One of the victims of xenophobia, the late Isaac Mabandla was buried at 1pm on Saturday in Chipinge.

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Mabandla is one of the victims of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa and he was murdered in the early hours of Thursday morning last week.

His wife, Lydia however does not have anywhere to stay. “Ipwo patamusiya haana pekugara,” a female relative told ZimEye via phone also saying there is no phone network coverage in the area.

Mabandla who was burnt to death, was buried in Chipinge. Fears are for his wife’s security were high – as she does not have a place to stay. In Johannesburg, her phone was stolen and she also lost her ewallet money with it. As per wide consensus (in a poll) donated funds by ZimEye news readers are now to secure a tenancy for her. The funds will come from a pot of over R16,000 left from an initial collection of R25,000 the difference which was paid for securing the first bus to evacuate the first batch of Zimbabweans on Wednesday morning.