MOSSEL BAY — The charred remains of torched homes scarred a crowded settlement of shacks where South Africa’s anti-migrant tensions exploded into violence, leaving two Mozambicans dead and hundreds fleeing for their lives.

Other homes attacked in last weekend’s rampage in an informal area of the southern coastal town of Mossel Bay stood in ruins, already looted, or were being dismantled by locals planning to take them over.

“I’m taken, Xhosa” was scrawled on the thin doors of a few shacks in the sprawling Giyani settlement, a signal that they are occupied by South Africans from the Xhosa ethnic group and should be left alone.

Among the makeshift dwellings, a South African woman stood in her dressing gown outside a shack of corrugated metal.

A man had just told her to leave, falsely accusing her of living with a man from the Shangaan group, another of South Africa’s many ethnicities, she told AFP.

“They said (they are coming) to destroy the house because, ‘you were staying with a Shangaan’,” she said, afraid to give her name but presenting her South African identity document.

“They said they don’t care about IDs,” said the woman, aged in her 30s. “Now it seems like nobody is safe.”

“A lot of my neighbours, they are citizens, they just ran,” she said, recalling the night of violence.

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Fifty-five homes were destroyed in the unrest that followed a protest last Friday against foreign nationals accused of taking jobs from locals.

Every day since then, other homes abandoned in fear have been dismantled by locals and cleared for new occupation, locals said.

Tribal war

Nearly 600 Mozambicans fled Mossel Bay and returned home in the days following the violence, according to the border management authority.

Nearly a week later, around 100 foreign nationals from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe were still crammed into a Mossel Bay community hall with their belongings, guarded by police.

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With them were several South Africans from another province, Limpopo, who feared they could also be targets because they are not Xhosa.

“Seventeen South Africans were chased away from their house,” said Ernest Sithole, who had been at the centre since Sunday.

They spoke Tsonga, a language widely used in Limpopo, he said.

A 19-year-old South African was stabbed to death on the night the two Mozambicans were killed, but the police are reluctant to link his killing to the anti-migrant tensions.

His stepfather insisted the teenager was attacked because he was Tsonga.

“I understand they killed my son because of a tribal war,” Steve Winston Kamwendo told AFP after prayers over the young man’s coffin before it was taken to Limpopo for burial.

Hundreds displaced

The Mozambicans, aged 27 and 43, were the first foreigners known to have been killed in a months-long campaign against undocumented African migrants that has seen protests across the country and a torrent of online xenophobic hate.

Tensions soared after a citizen-led group opposed to irregular migration last month ordered all undocumented foreign nationals to leave by 30 June.

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Ghana and Mozambique have repatriated hundreds of their citizens; Malawi and Nigeria have announced they would do the same.

The unrest in Mossel Bay, a normally calm town in the Western Cape province, has sent shock and fear through other towns along South Africa’s southern coast.

Around 400 displaced foreign nationals were taking refuge on Friday in community centres in Kleinmond, Gansbaai and Stanford around 250 kilometres (155 miles) away, municipal authorities said.

In the morning, around 100 locals went door-to-door in an informal settlement in Gansbaai to warn all African foreigners to leave by the month’s end, whether they had documentation to be in the country or not.