JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Blowing a vuvuzela takes a bit of instruction –- you have to purse your lips together and blow a raspberry into the plastic trumpet.

Robyn Curnow tries out a vuvuzela at Brazil vs. Italy.

The noise that comes out can startle you after your first toot, it sounds like an elephant trumpeting or a foghorn. Soon it become addictive, though, and you have to limit your vuvuzela usage if you don’t want to lose friends, family or your hearing.

I first tried to blow a vuvuzela two weeks ago, at the start of the Confederations Cup which has been held in South Africa ahead of next year’s World Cup. I failed miserably. I blew and I blew and nothing happened, just a few insipid little parps. But at the Brazil vs. Italy game, I got the hang of the vuvuzela and quickly joined the crowd in a jaunty one-note tune. Baaaah! Baaah! Baaah!

It is a sound so irritating and so obnoxious that it’s best to stick with the maxim “if you can’t beat ‘em, join em.” Not blowing a vuvuzela at a South African football game not only makes you feel a bit left out but it also makes you resent the noise everyone else it making.

I can understand why some footballers and fans hate the sound. In stadiums and even watching on television, the constant buzz of the vuvuzelas can be distracting. But with the World Cup one year ahead, everyone just better get used to the inevitable din of the vuvuzelas.

Complaining about the noise they make won’t make a difference –- mostly because no one will be able to hear you above the incessant ringing in their ears.

MUSINA, South Africa – Driving up to the Zimbabwe border, on the N1 highway, is a lesson in Trailer Packing 101. Vehicles of all shapes, sizes and roadworthiness are slowly pulling rickety trailers laden with goods.

Traffic lines up at the South African border town of Musina with Zimbabwe.

 At this time of the year, the exodus up north is a hair-raising journey during which you dodge some of the most outrageous examples of cars, buses and trucks I have ever seen on a road. Most look as if they are being held together with bits of tape and string.

But despite their flimsy, collapsing appearance these modes of transport will help to sustain many Zimbabweans this Christmas.

Loaded on the roofs and stuffed into the trailers are boxes of groceries, bags of clothes and even beds and door frames.

I asked one driver at the border post, whose car had a two-meter high bundle of goods perched precariously on the trailer, if there was a kitchen sink in his load as well. He laughed good naturedly and brushed off my question - leaving me to wonder if there was indeed a sturdy kitchen sink bound for Harare in his kit?

Mostly though, the basics are being transported in bulk across the border – one family had about 100 eggs in the back of their van. Another had so many bags of potatoes, it gave a new meaning to the phrase "carbo-loading." Others stock up on huge vats of cooking oil, kilograms of sugar and heavy bags of meilie meal or maize.

Food shortages and hyperinflation have left many Zimbabweans hungry and poor - which is why this highway of makeshift grocery trucks resembles a highway of hope for many.

For all the flat wheels, bent chassis and squealing brakepads, the steady bustle of traffic northwards means that for the next few weeks, at least, Zimbabweans who have relatives or friends in South Africa can savor the luxuries of basic commodities lovingly driven home for the holidays.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - If you haven't been to South Africa before, it must be hard to imagine the incongruity of a tented refugee camp in the suburb of Germiston, in Johannesburg's East Rand. It's quite an odd sight.

The scene reminded our cameraman, Barnaby Mitchell, of Goma, a town that became famous when hundreds of thousands sought refuge there after the Rwandan genocide.

Except this is no war zone.

It's a lower-income suburb with carefully tended gardens, houses with net curtains and neat white wrought iron fences.

But in the local park - which is sandwiched between a police station and a church - about 70 white plastic tents more commonly used in disaster areas or conflict zones have been pitched on the lawn

Immigrants fleeing the xenophobic violence came here for protection in the past few days. Many have horrible stories to tell of being hounded out of their shacks, taunted and threatened by angry South Africans who blamed the immigrants for their own economic woes.

So now the grass of the public park is littered with small fires, topped with cooking pots, and Zimbabweans and Mozambicans trying to warm food or boil water on the meagre looking flames.

People have so little, they tell me they left most of their possessions behind in their homes. They escaped with just a small bag or a trunk-load of valuables.

Most of the immigrants here had very little to begin with - they're economic migrants, who come to South Africa to scrape together a small income from working in the mines, or a gardeners and handymen in the richest country in the region.

I watched as two men were trying to bundle up two double bed mattresses and another tried to flog his small portable radio for 10 rand (about $1.50).

Even cooking pots and pans are in short supply. I also watched as someone tried to warm up water for a cup of tea on warm coals - in a plastic bottle. I didn't stay long enough to see if the plastic melted before the water was warmed up.

I spoke to a young Mozambican man called Antonio who had a backpack stuffed with three pairs of trousers, a roll of toilet paper and his toothbrush, toothpaste and some deodorant.

He said he was too scared to go back to his shack - a mob of South Africans had already warned him not to come back after they stole his DVD player and other valuables.

He and hundreds of other Mozambicans were waiting for a bus to take them back home. The Mozambican government has supplied buses to evacuate their citizens from South Africa. So too has the Malawian government. Even Zimbabweans have been promised emergency evacuation out of South Africa by the opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Who would have thought that African governments - who sheltered South African freedom fighters like Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki during the apartheid days - would be retrieving their own victimised people out of a democratic multi-racial South Africa?

A policeman told me that at least 500 Mozambicans left on Wednesday. Another few busloads are expected to go on Friday.

In anticipation of the mass exodus, there is long queue of people and luggage lined up by the park. The bags are neatly packed, the line is orderly and the families are patient.

They can't wait to get home.

Because they know they are not welcome here.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The images are so familiar to South Africans. I grew up in Johannesburg and the pictures of the recent xenophobic violence remind all of us of the dark days of apartheid.

South African police set up cordon as victim lay dying

The cat and mouse game between heavily armed police and residents in the townships.

The black smoke from burning shacks.

The bloodied bodies in the streets.

Even the method of killing - two people have been burnt alive - is a throw back to "necklacing," which was a favored tactic in the townships in the 1980s. Used on suspected informants, the "necklace" is a car tire, filled with petrol, put around the person's neck and set alight.

The pictures of a burning man were published on the front page of a daily newspaper. It was so disturbing I couldn't shake the image all day.

The brutality has shocked most people here. The suddenness of the violence and depth of resentment towards immigrants took the police, the government and community leaders by surprise.

But as winter approaches and the days get darker and colder, many here say they understand the anger.

Life is getting tougher for South Africa's poor. The slow delivery of social services, like housing, electricity and running water has left many disenchanted with the pace of social change since the end of apartheid 14 years ago.

Joblessness is rampant - real unemployement is about 40 percent. And crime remains a daily worry for most people here - 20,000 people were murdered in the past year.

So as life gets harder and harder, the poor look around for someone to blame. And they see the growing influx of foreigners - mostly Zimbabweans fleeing the meltdown in their own country - and get angry that they are having to share what little they have with non-South Africans.

That sense of resentment over scarce resources is understandable, but I find the people's brutality difficult to stomach.

I have spent a lot of time filming in the East Rand of Johannesburg, in the shanty towns and settlements and it astounds me everytime I hear and see the ugliness of xenophobia.

In those areas I have not found one person who feels sorry for the foreigners, who empathises with them. Instead there is a raw and vehement hatred of the "other."

My cameraman captured this distain on camera, when he filmed a young South African laughing and mocking a badly injured immigrant who was lying on the ground.

But one of the more troubling incidents I've witnessed was the attitude of the police - who seem to also have little sympathy for the foreigners.

We watched them set up a crime scene around a bleeding man who had been stabbed in the chest ... they spent a lot of time trying to set up a police cordon but no one went near the man.

Lying on his back, gasping, choking on his own vomit, none of the police tried to help him or make him more comfortable.

Pinned behind the cordon, but just meters away from the dying man, I asked one policeman if he could hold the man's hand, at least.

The immigrant looked so alone. Sprawled on the dusty ground of a foreign country where he is not wanted.

He died soon afterwards. His body just went limp.

No one held his hand.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – A little blond-haired boy rings the school bell. Lined up behind him, his classmates yell and jostle with each other in excitement. Like any school going kids, break time is fun – it is chance to play with friends.

But the startling thing about the 30 children running onto the playground at The Key School in Johannesburg is that all are autistic … they prefer to play alone.

Solitary five year old Momo is a striking example. Her teachers say she only plays in the sand box where she likes to repeatedly pick up the sand and throw it – mostly at you.

Teacher Reinette Palmer says the sand throwing is  Momo’s preferred way of communicating – that’s she’s trying to get attention with her behavior.

Momo is a sweet looking little girl, with a pixie-like face filled with wide-eyed innocence. But she will not look me or her teachers in the eye. She seems driven to constantly move around and throw sand by something deep inside her.

Later, I meet her mother Tumi, a small, smiling 27 year old. Tumi tells me she has two other daughters, younger than Momo. Momo was only diagnosed with autism last year, but she says she knew something was wrong with her eldest child years ago when Momo kept on missing her milestones and didn’t start talking.

She says her interactions with her family have improved since she started attending the Key School a year ago, soon after her diagnosis. Tumi says before she came to The Key School, Momo’s behaviour was embarrassing. "The tantrums she threw, we couldn’t take her out in public. It was hell. People stared and made comments, she tells us."

To help parents like Tumi and to ensure that home life with autistic children is not a constant battlefield, Reinette says she and the other teachers focus on teaching life skills. While we are at the school, we see groups of children being taught to brush their teeth, wash their faces and say their prayers. These are small milestones for most children but a big deal for many autistic kids.

Here in South Africa, autism is still misunderstood and stigmatised, says the Principal of Key School, Jenny Gous. She says there is little support for parents with autistic children too. "Very little available for people with children with autism," she says. "Whole lot of people not getting intervention. There are seven, eight, nine, schools touching less than a thousand children."

She tells me her school is called The Key because you never know what will unlock the potential of the children here.

A sentiment summed up by Reinette while she is sitting in the sand box with Momo. Dodging sand, smiling gently at the five year old, she says: "They’re in this world but not from this world. Our task is to bring them back to this world so they can cope."