JOHANNESBURG - Elizabeth Mokoena pulls out a pile of simple photocopies splashed with tough anti-crime calls like "stop raping our children, you are killing our nation."

This week, armed with the leaflets, the 54-year-old social worker will hit the streets of Alexandra, the township at the epicentre of last year's wave of anti-foreigner attacks that spilled across South Africa and killed 62 people.

She'll be speaking with residents to try to ease their concerns about poor government services, lack of housing and rampant crimes, trying to stop locals from venting frustrations on foreigners, in one of South Africa's new campaigns to root out the causes of xenophobia.

"We are trying to bring peace between the locals and the foreigners in South Africa," Mokoena told AFP from her office at the local police station, which recorded 101 murders and 133 rapes over 12 months.

The dusty streets of Alexandra resemble scores of former blacks-only townships that mushroomed after the fall of apartheid in 1994: shacks, brick houses, and fruit-and-meat stands in a sea of people, business and ramshackle housing.

"For 15 years there have been a hell of a lot of expectations in our country and for 15 years these expectations have not been met. That boils over into something like xenophobia," said Cameron Jacobs of the South African Human Rights Commission, which is part of the new project.

At a recent forum hosted by the organisers, issues of corruption in government and shoddy public services were repeatedly raised as driving forces behind South Africa's xenophobia.

Mokoena said the tension in Alexandra -- which lies a stone's throw from Johannesburg richest mansion-lined suburbs -- comes from foreigners being given government homes when South Africans live in one-room houses and shacks.

"I bet if the housing issue is fixed we will not see any more xenophobia. It is really a burning issue," she said.

The grandmother, who moved to Alexandra aged 20, is one of 60 community organisers involved in the new project. Twenty leaders have been drawn from three townships, along with 45 foreigners to identify solutions to key challenges.

The leaders were selected six months ago and have since undergone training in conflict mediation and programme development.

Lerato Marole, a leader from Kliptown in Soweto, said: "We've had 15 years of democracy and some people haven't enjoyed even a minute of that democracy, according to their mindset."

The Human Rights Commission has warned that foreigners who have been re-integrated into townships -- following the attacks which saw a man set alight in front of a crowd and shops and homes looted -- still feel unsafe.

In July, anger over poor government services mounted into violent protests in several parts of South Africa, with some foreign shops reported to have been looted and burned.

Foreign and local shopkeepers in the Cape Town township of Gugulethu penned a compromise this month, which they hope will ease the tensions with immigrants who are often blamed for stealing jobs in a country where nearly one in four workers is unemployed.

It states that foreigners can only set up shop 100 metres from a local store, there can't be any new shops set up by foreigners and 70 percent of shops must be locally owned.

In Alexandra, Mokoena was enthusiastic about the grass-roots approach of the initiative, saying education will play a big role in reconciling immigrants and locals.

A sticker proclaiming "xenophobia belongs here," was stuck to a rubbish bin outside Mokoena's office, with a finger pointing inside.

A man with dreadlocks walked by, looked at it, and said "that thing, it must go in the dust bin. No xenophobia here."