South Africans loot burnt-out immigrant homes

BOKSBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Scavengers in South African townships picked over the burnt-out shacks of former neighbors on Wednesday in search of scrap to sell.

At least 24 people have been killed in 10 days of attacks by poor South Africans on African immigrants they accuse of stealing their jobs and encouraging crime. Thousands of Africans have been driven from their homes.

Outside the Primrose shantytown in the East Rand region, roads were clogged with people steering wheelbarrows and shopping carts filled with twisted and burnt metal.

Long lines formed in front of dealers paying 2 rand (26 U.S. cents) per kilo.

Under a 'Cash for Scrap' sign at Main Reef Metals, one of the busiest shops in the area, a man counted out half a dozen burnt tea kettles.

"I found them in the bushes," he said.

Another arrived carrying a kitchen sink. He, too, said he had struck it lucky in the bush.

But others admitted that the bulk of the items had been collected from the homes of Zimbabweans and Mozambicans who were attacked and driven out of the township by armed mobs.

The immigrants were beaten and their houses torched in scenes that have been repeated throughout the Johannesburg area.

"It's from the foreigners' squatter camp," said Nomsa Nini, 23, who smiled as she brandished the 50 rand she received for a wheelbarrow of scrap.

South Africa has for decades been a haven for people from poorer neighboring states. An estimated 5 million had flooded in to the country of 50 million, many illegally, to find work in mines, factories, hotels and homes.

RESENTMENT

But resentment has been building among South Africa's own poor, many of them angry at seeing little benefit since the end of apartheid. Unemployment is still at some 24 percent.

Soaring food and fuel prices helped push tensions to breaking point and violence erupted near Johannesburg on May 11. Security forces have struggled to end the unrest and some 13,000 Africans have been forced to seek refuge.

"We must leave, It is not safe here," said a Zimbabwean woman named Amelia as she walked out of the East Rand's Ramaphosa shantytown, carrying a small bundle of clothes and belongings. She declined to give her last name.

Anti-immigrant anger is most often directed at Zimbabweans, who are the biggest group in South Africa.

But they have little incentive to return to a country where inflation has topped 165,000 percent, where food and fuel are in short supply and where a political standoff has brought violence since elections in March.

The danger is that more Zimbabweans could cross the porous border into South Africa if a June 27 presidential run-off election fails to resolve the crisis.

"We don't want the Zimbabweans here. They must go back and vote for their president and fix their country," said Thabo Setlhlako, a 29-year-old unemployed South African, as he sifted through the ashes of a burnt shack in Primrose. "We will chase them all out."

(Editing by Phumza Macanda and Matthew Tostevin)