Sometimes, in the midst of all the awful footage pouring in from across the country, one man’s story can come to embody the horror of the xenophobic attacks. That one man is Emmanuel Sithole, and the sequence of pictures that a Sunday Times photographer snapped speak volumes about the inhumanity we are seeing on a daily level.

Sithole was pursued through the streets of the Alexandra township and repeatedly attacked by a number of men. TimesLive described the attack as follows:

His attackers had followed him down a street, keeping their prey at arm’s length, waiting for an opening to land the fatal blow.

They circled him as, on his knees amid rubbish, he pleaded for mercy.

In those moments, Emmanuel Sithole was no longer a man, a neighbour, a human being. The intensity on his attackers’ faces showed that he had become a thing to kill – each thrust aimed with ferocity.

The attack lasted only two minutes but the blows landed were deadly enough to cause Sithole to die at Edenvale Hospital, where the photographer and his colleagues had taken him following the attack.

The police offered a R100 000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the attackers and it was reported this morning that three suspects had been taken into custody. Here’s News24:

The suspects were arrested in Alexandra with the help from the members of the community,” Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said.

“Several exhibits that may be used as evidence were seized during the arrests.”

Those arrests will come as scant consolation to Sithole’s family, nor it will put the minds of other foreign nationals at ease. What a black mark on our country’s name this past week has been.

You can see the rest of the graphic images of Sithole’s attack HERE.

[source:news24&timeslive]