South Africa's Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on Thursday vowed strong action, including deportation, against African migrants displaced by a wave of xenophobic attacks in May following a riot at a refugee camp outside Johannesburg, according to dpa. "The time has come to put our authority in place," the minister said in an interview with SAfm public radio, threatening to deport migrants who had applied for - but had not yet been granted - asylum, if they were involved in acts of violence. While insisting "we are a government that cares," Mapisa-Nqakula accused migrants at a troubled camp in southern Johannesburg of trying to "blackmail" the government. Her statements followed a standoff between police and migrants at Glenanda camp, where 1,800 people are sheltering following a two-week orgy of xenophobic violence in South Africa in May, in which over 60 African migrants were killed.
