Cape Town - A coalition representing more than 10 civil bodies marched to Parliament on Saturday to protest against the recent attacks on foreign nationals in Gauteng.

Around 100 people from the Africa Solidarity network, the Cape Town Housing Assembly, Gender Sonke Justice, Unifam and others marched to Parliament to express their support for both legal and illegal immigrants who have been attacked.

JP Balous of Unifam, who is originally from the DRC, told those minority of frustrated South Africans who are committing the attacks that their hatred of him will not solve their own problems.

"If you kill me, you're not going to end your poverty."

Faeza Meyer of the Housing Assembly, which specialises in finding houses for displaced immigrants, said she had a sad heart on Saturday.

"We cannot have this here in Cape Town, or South Africa. Africa is for all Africans," Meyer said.

"It's unfair to our brothers and sisters who have to go through this. It's our home, this is us. It's our own people who are oppressing them."

She said the country needs to get rid of the problem by providing education on the matter, speaking to young people, talking to churches and to mosques and to "go all over and everywhere".

"We cannot have people bullying our brothers and sisters, and their children."

Cameroon native and coalition representative Lumumba Chia said it's a blatant lie that "South Africans are xenophobic".

He said certain politicians are trying to get false popularity from frustrated, poor South Africans.

Most illegal immigrants from the continent want to get their documents in order, but are hindered by Home Affairs policy,  he said.

He said the system puts unnecessary backlogs on the residence claims of African immigrants, but that their European counterparts don't have that problem.