Africans have come out to boycott South Africa after days of looting and violence targeting foreigners in which five people died. Nigerian singers and Zambia’s football team are among those in the boycott.

South Africa’s social development minister told the BBC the rioters feared losing their jobs to foreigners. The country has become a magnet for migrants from other parts of Africa. It has one of the continent’s biggest and most developed economies.

Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy vowed to never go to South Africa again until the government “wakes up”. He tweeted that he himself had had his own “xenophobic experiences at the hands of South Africans ” in 2017.Another Nigerian singer, Tiwa Savage, announced on Twitter she was pulling out of a concert she had planned to perform at in South Africa in September, condemning “the barbaric butchering of my people”.

It is not clear whether any Nigerians have died in the violence but the singer later clarified that “my people” could be any African person. The Nigerian government has also boycotted the World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo was originally expected to attend the regional meeting between business leaders and governments. And the country has issued a travel warning to its citizens, tweets Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s assistant.(BBC)…[+]