Necklacing Returns to South Africa

And to think, South Africa was considered a safe haven for those fleeing the horrors of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Now this.

South Africa has been rocked by scenes of hatred and savagery as poor township blacks turn on the migrants they claim have taken their jobs.

More than 20 have been killed and thousands forced to flee by gangs wielding guns, clubs and machetes.

Most horrifying of all, for a country which thought the worst was behind it, has been the return of necklacing, the appalling method of killing which involves putting a petrol-filled tyre around a victim's neck and setting it ablaze.

In the violent 1980s and 1990s, necklacing was a common sentence imposed by 'people's courts' on collaborators with the apartheid regime and criminals.It was frequently carried out in the name of the now-ruling African National Congress and was alleged to have been endorsed by Nelson Mandela's then wife, Winnie.

Now necklacing is being used against Zimbabweans and Mozambicans who have fled violence and poverty in their own countries.

In horrific attacks, mainly around Johannesburg, women have been raped and men beaten to death. Shops and homes have been looted and dozens of shacks burned to the ground.

"They screamed at me to get out, that I didn't belong here. Then they burned everything in my house," said Zimila, who suffered a five-inch gash in his head.

South Africans yesterday woke up to view terrifying scenes on the front pages of their newspapers while television pictures showed nervous, gun-toting police struggling to keep order on the outskirts of Johannesburg's central business district, bringing the violence closer to commerce and the white population.

Last night the country's Human Rights Commission supported by the opposition Democratic Alliance called on the government to put soldiers on the street of the areas worst affected by the trouble.

'Please stop now,' he said. 'This is not how we behave. These are our sisters and brothers.'

So much for the hope and change of the Rainbow Nation.

The unrest is an major embarrassment for the self-styled Rainbow Nation, which has proclaimed its tolerance and hopes for a flood of foreign visitors for the football World Cup in two years time.

Update: Gateway Pundit has more.