Hawkers and beggers who haunt the streets are a daily reality at robots and intersections.
But what motorists often see merely as an irritant, or register as a threat to their safety, signals a growing social phenomenon — the plight of refugees and asylum seekers.
Refugees come into the country from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Somalia. Eloge Badibanga, a Congolese refugee, explains that ‘things in Congo are bad because the war destroyed almost everything”.
He reflects the experience of many refugees when he speaks of being being harassed in Hillbrow. ‘They speak to me in Zulu and when I cannot answer they know I am not South African. Then they ask what I am doing here.”
The flow of human traffic into South Africa has prompted Wits University to introduce a master’s degree in forced migration studies. Problems migrants encounter include finding accommodation and work, as well as trying to find a new identity in a country where they experience many cultural difficulties.
The course also addresses the xenophobia prevalent among many South Africans, who think foreigners are taking away their jobs and threatening their livelihoods.
Denise Malauene is a Mozambican student at Wits who is completing her research dissertation on migrants living in urban areas of Maputo. She wants to know how refugees in Maputo survive financially. She plans to take this knowledge back to Mozambique to help the government better understand its refugee situation and formulate policies accordingly.
Mozambique has many refugees from Africa’s Great Lakes region. Many settle there en route to South Africa. Malauene believes the master’s programme is valuable because ‘there is a need in Mozambique for people with knowledge about refugees — with an academic background”. This is because Mozambique only started receiving refugees after its war ended in 1993 — until then, Mozambicans themselves were refugees.
It is a misconception that refugees and asylum seekers are a new phenomenon in South Africa. South Africa is ‘a major destination for refugees”, according to Dr Loren Landau, research coordinator of the programme. Before 1994 refugees in South Africa went largely unnoticed. They were dumped in ‘reserves” and ‘homelands”. Because in 1994 the African National Congress government inherited a legacy of making refugees invisible and disempowered, there were no policies to deal with migrants.
The Wits MA programme started in the late 1990s ‘to produce academic work and research that has positive effects on the lives of refugees”, says Landau.
Students work hand-in-hand with various aid agencies and government departments. They will work this year with the Johannesburg council to produce research about the city’s migrants; and are therefore directly involved in helping local and provincial government and policymakers formulate legislation to address the needs of refugees and asylum seekers.
‘Instead of seeing refugees and asylum seekers as a threat to South African jobs, city leaders and residents should see them as a significant stock of human capital,” Landau says. Many migrants have ‘entrepreneurial skills and training”, and South Africa ‘desperately needs such resources”.
Job opportunities for graduates of the programme arise in NGOs and relief organisations, the government and international bodies. — Witsnews