/ 14 May 2009

Cape Town takes down tents as storm clouds gather

With the weather bureau predicting the Cape’s first massive winter storm this weekend, the City of Cape Town has decided to start dismantling the last remaining tents still housing about 400 displaced foreign nationals in the Blue Waters refugee-camp outside Muizenberg.

More than a year after hundreds of thousands foreign nationals were displaced in the Cape, about 400 mainly Somali and Congolese nationals — including about 150 children — are still in tents and have refused to integrate back into Cape townships. They want to return to their countries of origin because they fear for their lives in South Africa.

These people have been living in tents for more than a year. Last week the city of Cape Town served orders on the camp saying that they will evict people still living in Blue Waters.

With black rain clouds gathering over the Atlantic the city has put its disaster management teams on full alert. But it has also sent large numbers of Metro police to Blue Waters camp to take down remaining tents.

Pieter Cronje from the City of Cape Town could not be reached for comment on Thursday afternnon.