We do hereby kindly appeal to Eastern Cape, regional administration to urgently intervene a new xenophobic threats against the Somali shop owners in Wells Estate, Port Elizabeth.

For the last two weeks we have been receiving complains from Somali Shop owners at Wells Estate that the area councilor has been threatening to take unspecified actions against them if they don’t shut down over 16 shops without any given reasons.

According to the Shop owners, the councilor switched off power from their shops through Eskom employees to pressure them harder to meet his demands but defiant shop owners went to The Daily Sun newspaper which later highlighted their plight on one of its pages (Friday 2 July 2010 page 2)

According to reports we are getting, the area councilor has had a close door meeting with the shop owners on 5th July 2010 and demanded that they should press hard The Daily Sun newspaper to apologize on their behalf and shut down their shops or face possible attacks from the locals giving an ultimatum of seven days.

We feel this is a very serious issue and needs urgent government interventions to thwart any possible pending attacks against the Shop owners.

Your urgent intervention is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Your’s faithfully

A. Y. Ahmed Rabi
Chairperson of SASA
Eastern Cape office