Pakistan, June 4 -- Hundreds of foreigners fearing for their lives have taken shelter in community halls on South Africa's south coast, saying mobs of locals were going door-to-door telling them to leave the country.

Mostly nationals of Malawi and Mozambique, many told AFP they had fled their homes at the weekend and spent nights in the mountains and bush, before making their way to the small-town community centres.

"They said 'you are a foreigner, you don't belong in South Africa, so you must go'," Mozambican Thomas Vincent Baloyi told AFP in Gansbaai, around 110 kilometres (70 miles) southeast of Cape Town.

"I said, 'no, I got documents to be here in South Africa'. They didn't want to know," said Baloyi, who has been in the country f...