Amid Broken Dreams, Poverty Breeds Hatred

"They use witchcraft to get jobs," Makolele added. It "helps the white people to like them more."

Even the few men here with steady paychecks, such as factory worker Jan Mahlaba, 33, complain that immigrants undercut their wages, or contribute to South Africa's high rate of violent crime.

"I'm happy they are being killed because their lives are full of crime," Mahlaba said.

The owner of the house that had been destroyed, Alberto Jossias Chivetlhe, 53, has taken refuge on the lawn outside a nearby police station, where hundreds of victims of the attacks have gathered.

He said he had come to this area first in 1972, to work in a nearby mine, then settled permanently in 1984, eventually gaining South African citizenship. That made him eligible for government housing, which was made of concrete blocks rather than the metal sheeting common in Ramaphosa. His home also had a concrete latrine with a toilet and a sink -- rare luxuries here.

Chivetlhe added on several rooms, a small shop, a telephone kiosk and a hair salon. He was living here with his wife and three children when a mob of men attacked May 18.

He recalled the men screaming as they ripped open the roof, saying, "How can Shangaans" -- the ethnic group of most of the Mozambicans here -- "have houses when we as citizens don't have houses!"

Chivetlhe, a former schoolteacher with a round, leathery face, has since sent his family to Mozambique, but his children don't speak Portuguese, the main language there, and he worries that their schooling will be affected. He expressed little sympathy for the frustrations of unemployed South Africans.

"We come fully skilled," he said. "We are good carpenters. We are good bricklayers. It's different than South Africans because South Africans need practice first."

Alfredo Tembe Bila, a Mozambican butcher who was chased out of his home in Ramaphosa along with his wife and 6-year-old son, said the men who attacked them carried shotguns and machetes. One said, "Let's kill that dog. He's a Shangaan."

"They are saying we are stealing their women, we are stealing their jobs, we are stealing their houses," said Bila, 38, who came here 14 years ago and said he's never done any of those things. "They don't want to look for a job because they don't want to work for less money."

Though the situation in Ramaphosa has calmed, there are signs of the new order taking hold. Men and women are scavenging leftover metal sheeting to build homes. One 29-year-old man, who declined to give his name, said a friend in Ramaphosa called to invite him to take over the lot of an immigrant who was chased away. The man quickly sank several logs into the ground and fastened sheets of wood between them.

At Chivetlhe's house, once one of the nicest in Ramaphosa, a South African family moved in the week after he left, but was evicted by the police, neighbors said.

Whoever gets to stay in the house will have to do extensive cleaning and repair. The windows are broken. The bedroom has a charred bed frame and a burned blanket and pillow; the heat blackened the walls and peeled the plastic laminate from the door.

That didn't stop Rosina Kaibane, 30, a South African hairdresser, from occupying Chivetlhe's front yard, where she was braiding the hair of a customer. Kaibane said her salon was burned in the violence -- it was next to a home owned by an immigrant -- and she needed a new place to work.

Chivetlhe has not given up hope of returning, but the men gathered outside his house made clear that he will not get the chance.

"It will never happen," Mahlaba said. "We're still going to do the same thing."

A friend, Jram Motseatsea, 30, added, "If he wants to die, he can come back."