'We don't want you press people to put it in the paper that it is xenophobia. There's a World Cup coming in a few months' time. There would be an outcry if we say it is xenophobia and it involves only 20 people. You see, I love my country and I love the Western Cape."

This was the response of the Democratic Alliance's Theewaterskloof mayor, Chris Punt, to Mail & Guardian questions about the hounding of 20 Somali traders from the farming village of Riviersonderend, on the Garden Route between Cape Town and Mossel Bay, and the looting of their shops last week.

It lends weight to the complaint by displaced foreigners that Western Cape provincial police and municipal officials are covering up the spate of violent attacks on them because of the approaching Fifa World Cup.

Riviersonderend residents accused the Somalis of murdering mentally handicapped 26-year-old Denwin Willemse. But a post-mortem revealed that he had died of natural causes.

The displaced Somalis are now housed in a municipal shed and the locals have refused to allow them to be reintegrated.

Punt first told the M&G that local authorities could not put their finger on the reasons for the violence. But when pushed further he said he was going "to be honest". He then expressed his fear of an "outcry" if media reports blamed the attacks on xenophobia.

In Cape Town Zimbabwean political refugee and teacher Anthony Muteti has moved his wife and three children from Hout Bay's Imizamo Yethu to a rented flat in suburban Mowbray, which he can't afford. Muteti fled during the violence in the informal settlement in 2008 and again last month when many foreigners were chased from their homes after the alleged rape of a three-year- old child.

Hout Bay station commissioner Dorothy Xesha told the M&G that last month's attack on foreigners was not motivated by xenophobia. "Locals are just sick of crime in the area," she said.

Muteti said Imizamo Yethu residents warned that xenophobia would flare up after the World Cup, particularly if South Africa loses. He believes anti-foreigner sentiment is growing. "The police and locals are saying this violence against foreigners is not xenophobia, yet only foreigners are being targeted."

Mail and Guardian