Africans welcome 2009

December 31, 2008

Thousands of South Africans and African immigrants took to the streets in a spectacular carnival of song and dance as they bid farewell to 2008 in Johannesburg. Fostering tolerance following the xenophobic attacks earlier this year, foreign nationals and locals strutted their stuff in the New Year Eve Carnival celebrations. The organisers dubbed the theme of the fifth annual Johannesburg Carnival "Unity in our diversity" - a fitting and symbolic gesture of reconciliation given the scars that residents still bear months after the brutal attacks on foreign nationals in May this year.