Cabinet Announces IMC to Continue Monitoring

Cabinet announced in a statement yesterday that the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on Xenophobic Violence will continue to monitor the situation around the country “to ensure that no further incidents or threats of violence take place”. Cabinet again called on South Africans to ‘say no to xenophobia’.

The IMC was reactivated following reports by CoRMSA and others of a number of threats being made of violence against foreign nationals after the World Cup. The IMC then played an important role in ensuring an effective security response to threats and initial outbreaks of violence in some locations and thus helped to contain violence and prevent its spread.

In the media briefing, Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko observed that violence against foreign nationals usually took place in particular ‘hotspots’ and noted a commitment from Cabinet to deal with new threats “decisively without any waste of time”. He stated further that “the IMC will continue to exist to monitor developments and our security forces will always be on alert to watch out for any possible incidence of violence”.

CoRMSA welcomes the ongoing active role of the IMC to ensure actions to prevent and contain threats of incidents of violence against foreign nationals.

To read the Cabinet statement, please click here. To view the transcript of the media briefing, please click here.