Musina - Communications Minister Faith Muthambi will this morning visit the border town of Musina in Limpopo to promote good relations between South Africans and foreign nationals living in the area.
The visit is part of government's outreach programme to interact with communities to address issues related to attacks on foreign nationals. Parliament has also suspended its plenary sittings to allow MPs to travel across the country to interact with their communities.
They are spreading the message "We are all Africans" to South Africans, especially the few who have badly dented the image of the country in the past few weeks by attacking people from other African countries.
The border town has become "home away from home" for many Zimbabweans, Zambians, Malawians, Tanzanians, Somalis and Mozambicans, among others.
Minister Muthambi will use her visit to apologise for the attacks, which have rocked some parts of the country.
“As a country, we strongly condemn these barbaric attacks on our brothers and sisters. We need to understand that during the dark days of apartheid, it was [other Africans] who provided shelter for us.
“We are saying to South Africans - we can’t live in isolation. These are our brothers and we must live side by side with them. There is no way that we can win our fight against poverty and unemployment in the continent if we are still fighting each other,” she said.
Minister Muthambi will visit the Beit Bridge border post, where she will tell foreign nationals that they are welcome in South Africa.
Later in the afternoon, she will address a meeting of both locals and foreign nationals at the Musina municipal show grounds. - SAnews.gov.za
