”I love my country, it is beautiful — it has desert, it has a beach. But people are poor because of the war” Eritrea: ‘No place to live’
Saba, a 21-year-old greeneyed beauty from Eritrea, has led an isolated life in South Africa. We met her in a dingy restaurant in an obscure building deep in the heart of Johannesburg’s inner city. The patrons are friendly, and the whole place is filled with an air of camaraderie. Saba was working over a hot plate cooking injara, a kind of crêpe made with rice flower and succulent fillings. She fled Eritrea two years ago with her elder brother. She wanted to get away from a government that conscripts women into the army. ”I want to go to America or Australia, where I can work and go out,” she says, while the upbeat tunes of her native land blast from an old radio.
The patrons in the tiny restaurant are predominantly Eritrean, with a sprinkling of Ethiopians. ”We look the same as Ethiopians, so South Africans think we’re the same people,” she says — with a flick of the hand indicating that the mistake doesn’t concern her much.
She runs the restaurant six days a week, from 6am to 6pm. Then she goes home to a flat on the east side of the city, a home she shares with 10 other Eritreans.
”I never go out because of the crime,” she says sadly. ”I just come here and go home.” Like other refugees from Eritrea, Saba feels that the country of her birth is no place to live. She feels she has few freedoms in Eritrea.
Poverty is also rife. On the wall of the restaurant is a collaged picture of Eritrea, one of its elements being a woman in uniform.
She places big mugs of fresh mango juice, a favourite Eritrean drink, on the table. Men sit around at tables covered with floral plastic sheets. The restaurant is busy for a weekday — it is almost a hideout for unemployed Eritreans, where they can pass the time.
The relationship between Eritrea and Ethiopia has been a volatile one since the two were federated in a 1952 post-colonial agreement. Ten years later, Ethiopia annexed Eritrea, making it a province, sparking a 30-year struggle for independence that ended in 1991 when Eritrean rebels defeated government forces.
But border conflicts remain; Ethiopia rejected the findings of a United Nations commission on the issue. The UN has had to send in a peacekeeping force.
While technically a democracy, Eritrea suffers from repressive leadership.
The state has refused to implement a Constitution ratified by referendum in 1997, and the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice has outlawed any opposition. There have been no elections, and President Issayas Afewerki has detained without trial hundreds of dissidents, including 11 members of Parliament, labelled ”traitors”, and journalists accused of being ”mercenaries and spies”. Independent media have been closed down. Many dissidents have ”disappeared”.
In South Africa, Eritreans are given refugee status — which has to be renewed on a monthly basis. They are not allowed to work, and many live on money sent by family members from other parts of the world.
Michael Tekl, a former guerrilla fighter, speaks with pain of a country lost to the corruption of a technocrat.
He says Afewerki has betrayed the people who fought the long, painful war for freedom.
It is hard to imagine this softly spoken man leading a hard military life. He left Eritrea almost three years ago after being conscripted. ”There is no democracy there, because we have dictatorship,” he says. ”I ran away because I don’t like war. The government
put me by force in the army. I don’t like politics, I don’t like war.”
In Eritrea men and women between 18 and 40-years-old are required to do military service, and can be called up at any time. The service period is technically 18 months, but can be extended indefinitely, providing the state with cheap labour. Tekl says: ”We Eritreans don’t have rights to go out of the country.
” Tekl is married to an Afrikaans woman and now has a temporary permit to sell socks to wholesalers from a room next to the restaurant. His wife Teresa stands out among the eatery’s patrons — she is the only white woman there. She is playing pool in this festive atmosphere, where the smell of spicy food hangs heavily in the air.
Tekl was lucky, he says, in that he knew how to cross borders undetected.
Many Eritreans pay more than $3 000 to leave the country. ”I love my country, it is beautiful — it has desert, it has a beach,” says Tekl. But ”people are poor because of the war”.
Tekl will never return. ”The president arrested 25 ministers — they they don’t like to fight, so the president, he likes to
fight and put them in jail.” For Tekl there is no chance of peace if the president still runs the country like a despot.
The journey from Eritrea to South Africa takes 15 days, using any and all means of transport, moving through Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Swaziland, into South Africa. ”We pay the soldiers at the Swazi border to get us in South Africa,” says Tekl. ”But I was arrested by South African soldiers and taken to Lindela.”
At the Lindela repatriation centre he applied to the Department of Home Affairs for asylum and was given one month’s refuge. Now, he does not have to renew his refugee status each month, because he is married to a South African.
But Tekl is scandalised at the suggestion that he married his wife for citizenship. ”I love my wife — without her I cannot work, I can’t get bank account. I marry her for love.”
He met Teresa over a pool table in the formerly poor-white area of Newlands in Johannesburg. She likes the Eritrean culture: ”They will never eat alone,” she says, ”but will invite you to sit around the table and share from the same plate.” For Teresa the culture of humility and giving makes Eritrean men a better catch than South African men. ”I am going to visit my in-laws in May,” she says. She
will go alone, because Tekl cannot leave South Africa.
South Africa, say the restaurant’s patrons, is a good place to find refuge: ”In Kenya there is too much corruption in the police and in
Mozambique they only speak Portuguese.”
Eritreans entering South Africa join an informal network of mutual support. ”I will write to my family and they know where we all are,” says one.
The delicious meal we ate at the Eritrean restaurant cost a mere R20 for three people, and that included the huge mugs of mango juice. But Saba insisted on giving it to us for free. ”You get what you give,” she says.
All names have been changed.