Xenophobic killing in South African township caught by photographer
By Unknown - Tuesday, April 21, 2015
By Brent Swails, CNN
Shocking photos capture fatal xenophobic attack
Johannesburg (CNN)He checked the series of stills on his camera. It was then that photographer James Oatway realized the entire attack had taken less than two minutes.
It was the morning after a night of unrest in Johannesburg's Alexandra Township that saw foreign-owned shops looted and destroyed.
Mozambican Emmanuel Sithole was walking down a street when four South Africans surrounded him. Sithole pleaded for mercy, but it was already too late. The attackers bludgeoned him with a wrench, stabbed him with knives, all in broad daylight. And Oatway had captured it all on his camera.
"They looked like hardened thugs, just by their intensity, the way they moved, the expressions on their faces," Oatway told CNN. "They wanted one thing and that was to kill Emmanuel. They wanted his blood and nothing was going to stop them from doing that."
