On 11 May 2008, violence directed against foreign nationals broke out in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra. In the following two weeks, the xenophobia descended on seven of the country's nine provinces. Samuel Zona, originally from Zimbabwe, used to live in Ivory Park, a township about 20km north of Johannesburg, before the violence broke out.
Forced from his Ivory Park home after giving his five brothers from Alexandra shelter, Zona took refuge at his place of work, The Village Safe Haven, a charity that runs a foster care home and feeding scheme, in Johannesburg's northern suburbs.
Zona was employed as a gardener by the charity, but his duties have changed. Each day he wakes at 5 a.m. to help prepare more than 9,000 meals for the hundreds of foreign nationals who have sought refuge at the police station in Alexandra, including his own brothers.
"After the attacks started in Alex (Alexandra), five of my brothers came to me in Ivory Park. Two days later a group of men came to my house and woke us up - it was about 2 a.m. - they said they were looking for thugs from Alex.
"I told them: 'I have no thugs here', but it didn't matter. They said that [if my brothers] were from Alex, then they must go and die in Alex. They drove my brothers out, literally."
"We asked them to let us wait until morning because there were no [minibus-]taxis operating at that time, due to the fact it was still very early. We waited until 4 a.m. and I walked my brothers to the taxi rank. It was quite scary, but such is life.
"Since then three of my brothers have returned to Zimbabwe. There are no jobs there, so we will have to support them from here. My other two brothers are at the police station in Alex."
"The other day I phoned them and asked them if they had had supper. They said, 'yes'. I asked them what, and they said, 'rice, samp [coarsely milled white maize] and [marrow] bones. I realised that they really were getting what I have been preparing, and it made me feel very proud."
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