'Poverty behind xeno attacks'

2008-06-21 21:14

Johannesburg - Poverty and poor service delivery were major factors behind recent xenophobic attacks, ANC president Jacob Zuma said on Saturday, SABC news reported.

Zuma stressed that the government had to acknowledge that its failure to improve the lives of poverty-striken communities worsened most of the attacks on residents in informal settlements.

"The conditions of the informal settlements themselves are actually responsible for people to behave in a particular way," he said after a meeting with residents of the Gugulethu informal settlement near Springs, on Gauteng's east rand.

"And they [local residents] even said that is why these attacks were not in places that are not like informal settlements.

- SAPA