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He said the foreigners have been charged for being illegal immigrants and would be deported to their countries next week.



"At present the foreigners are being kept in Lindela - a place of safety," Makgoba said.

"We should be the last people to have this problem of having a negative attitude towards our brothers and sisters who come from outside."

He said he had heard that people attacked others while singing the song Umshini wam.

"That is a serious matter, for that song belongs to the ANC, it doesn't belong to unknown people.

"The question is, who are those people who are misleading the public by singing an ANC song when they're doing the wrong thing?" he asked.

"People are abusing (an) ANC song for wrong things that they're doing and they must be condemned."

While calling for the establishment of street committees, Zuma said criminals took advantage of xenophobic attacks on foreigners "for criminal activity".

Tsepiso Makwetla: Mr President, one of government’s and certainly your stated goals is the issue of poverty alleviation, and looking on not only MDGs but looking at this current administration. How far are we from achieving that goal and what is the link with the national war room? Is there a strong link in terms of helping government then achieve those goals before that…

President Thabo Mbeki: Well, all elements of government policy over the years have been focused on the matter of poverty, in all its various manifestations. The issue of that national war room arises from we’re saying that as government, because of the extensive support system in government for poor families, we actually have a very extensive register of poor households. Because they’re already receiving assistance, so people come, my name is so and so, this  is my address, this is my ID number, and the base of which they get support of one kind or another. So we know which household is under strain, and we’re therefore saying that let’s then get into each household and rather than just have blanket programmes, general programmes which do reach people, let’s go from household to household. Because it’s there. I’m saying we’ve got the register because they’re already receiving assistance. What then do we do with this household to make sure that we speed up the problem of addressing poverty in that particular household? You see, you can see the detailed amount of work that has got to go into that. It’s more than saying you know we are raising the Child Support Grant age to whatever, and then you make money available for that. That’s fine. That’s fine as far as it goes, but to go beyond that is as I say to come down to these individual households, and that’s why you need a mechanism  to be able to do that, that war room on poverty