Mpanda was returning from the shops, a grocery bag containing three bread rolls and a packet of sugar in his hand, when a yellow police van raced past him. He kept walking, and was just about to enter his building when a second police van screeched to a stop right in front of him. The door of the van was flung open and out jumped two black policemen in uniform, guns in holsters and chests bulging with bulletproof vests. They ordered him to stay put and strode towards him.
Without demanding to see his permit, they pinned him against a tree and searched him. When they finished searching him he sighed deeply, relieved, and when they demanded his permit, more as an afterthought, he cheerfully gave it to them. They were only doing their duty, he thought — he’d welcomed the current crackdown as an adequate response to the rampant crime rate in the country.
“Where are you from?” asked one of them, examining his permit.
“From Angola,” he said, unruffled, having often been asked such things before.
The policeman scrutinised his permit, turned it over, and finally gave it to his colleague who, contemptuously, without even bothering to look at it, asked, “What the hell are you doing in South Africa?”
Calmly, perhaps a little thoughtlessly, he replied, “Is it a problem being in South Africa?”
The policeman glared at him and Mpanda, realising his mistake and fearing reprisal, turned to the other policeman hoping for reassurance, but the expression on his face also seemed to suggest to Mpanda that he had somehow said the wrong thing. Abruptly, without giving Mpanda a chance to retract his remark, the policeman tore up his permit.
“You have no right to be here,” said the policeman. “This is not your country.”
Mpanda tried to utter something by way of protestation, but words failed him. For a moment he gazed down at the pieces of his permit that lay scattered about him, as if somehow he could reassemble them.
“You are under arrest,” said the policeman.
They grabbed him by the belt and hurled him into the back of the van as if he were a sack of flour.
“I have done nothing wrong. Please!”
The door was slammed shut and, as the interior became dark, the stale smell of sweat rose about him. He looked around. He could feel the presence of people and hear their breathing, but could see no one. Then, slowly, as his eyes became accustomed to the dark inside the van, he saw them — 10 or 11 people — their heads rocking to the motion of the van. The one in the far corner, tall and thin, with an elongated face and a very dark complexion, could be Senegalese. The stocky one next to him, with incisions on his cheeks, could be Nigerian. The one with his cosmetic-induced lightness could be Congolese.
As he struggled to sit up, Mpanda caught a glimpse through the wire mesh of the window and saw two girls with tinted hair and washed-out blue jeans strolling past, speaking in Zulu, laughing merrily and clapping their hands.
That night, they were locked in a damp cell in the Hillbrow police station.
The next morning they were rounded up and once again forced into the police van, which was to take them to Lindela Deportation Camp, near Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg. As they crawled through a heavily guarded gate, the high ochre-coloured walls, the barbed wire and the police with dogs reminded Mpanda of a concentration camp.
Once out of the van, Mpanda and his fellow detainees were herded into a reception area where they were registered, giving name, date and place of birth and area of apprehension. After registration they were led into an adjacent hall and listened like schoolchildren as the chief of security, pacing to and fro, read them the house rules in English, isiZulu and Sesotho.
“You may not steal. You may not sell goods on pain of having them confiscated. You may not attempt to flee on pain of being transferred to a conventional prison.”
The compound was bustling with thousands of black immigrants; men and women brought here as a result of the crackdown on crime. Through the rowdy crowd Mpanda saw someone carrying a piece of cardboard on which were written the words: Welcome to Lindela, the house of waiting! He was holding the cardboard high enough for everyone to see.
Nearby a woman with a face glistening with sweat and an infant tucked in her arms was crying, “Please let me go home to Zambia. Please deport me. I can’t live like this. My baby has no milk. You South Africans are bad people. You have forgotten all the good we did while you were in exile in Zambia.”
The cell that they were allocated to sleep in consisted of 25 metal bunk beds with a television above the door. Mpanda occupied a bed from which he could watch television. He tried to focus on the sea-life documentary running on the television, but he soon lost interest. He was hungry, but had nothing to eat. He had already eaten the rolls he’d bought before he was arrested. He sat up on the bed and turned to a fellow detainee who lay on the bed next to his.
“Where are you from?” Mpanda asked him by way of introduction.
“I am from Mozambique,” the neighbour said. “My name is Bene-dito Matola. And you?”
“Mine is Mpanda, Manuel Mpanda. I’m from Angola,” he replied.
“From Angola?” the neighbour said. “And you don’t have papers? Angolans get refugee papers. There is war in Angola.”
“I had a permit, but they tore it up,” Mpanda said.
“These police don’t respect foreigners, especially black foreigners. They think we have no rights in this country,” Benedito said, and shook his head. “They came to my home in Alexandra at about five in the morning the day before yesterday. I was in bed with my girlfriend. They kicked the door open and stormed into the bedroom. They did not even ask if I had papers; they saw my inoculation mark and arrested me.”
He pulled up the left sleeve of his shirt to show Mpanda his inoculation mark.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Mpanda asked.
“They will release you,” Benedito said. “There is no need to worry.
They will find your file at Home Affairs. You won’t be deported. I, on the other hand, don’t have papers and I will be deported. But the sooner I am deported, the sooner I will come back.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I will jump over the border at Ressano Garcia. It’s not the first time. They are wasting their time by deporting me. I have to come back; my girlfriend and child are here. They need me. When did you come to South Africa?”
“In December 1994,” Mpanda replied.
“So, you’ve been six years in South Africa. Are you married?”
“I am married and have a daughter,” Mpanda explained. “My wife and daughter are in Luanda. They were here last month, but had to go back to Angola.”
“Why?” Benedito asked.
“We couldn’t find a school for our daughter.”
“Then you must go to your wife and your daughter,” Benedito said.
“Unfortunately, I can’t go back home.”
“Why can’t you go back? What have you done?” asked Benedito.
“It’s a long story,” said Mpanda, and began to tell his story.
Life in the ‘promised land’
Going Home
by Simão Kikamba
(Kwela)
This novel provides insight into the lives of immigrants living in South Africa and the xenophobia many of them face.
The story traces the journey of an Angolan refugee, Mpanda, who decides to return home from exile in Zaire. But political turmoil in Angola forces him to flee once again, and he ends up in the “promised land”, South Africa.
He arrives expecting a good life and refugee status. What a rude awakening for him when he discovers that black foreigners are despised by most of the locals and there is no chance of protection from the police, who loathe foreigners just as much.
Mpanda has legal papers allowing him to live and work in South Africa, but this does not protect him and other immigrants from the police, who tear up their permits and arrest them for any kind of “suspicion”. A bribe usually helps secure temporary freedom — temporary because there will always be other cops demanding more bribes. It’s either that or Lindela Deportation Camp, where the immigrants are subjected to all manners of abuse, physical and verbal. Mpanda has good educational qualifications, but cannot find a decent job because of his foreign status. Soon he resorts to illegal means to survive.
This is ironic in a country where xenophobia has been recognised by the government as a serious problem, while people in institutions, such as the police force, help reinforce stereotypes about black foreigners. They are seen as “stealing” jobs from locals or coming to South Africa for criminal activities.
While there are certainly those with criminal intent — Nigerian drug dealers and many who are illegally in the country — people such as Mpanda are merely victims of circumstance who have been pushed into a life of crime.
The book also highlights the plight of women who follow their husbands to South Africa or who are deceived into coming here by men, and then have no one to turn to except those who exploit and abuse them. They usually have little or no education and children to look after. They have to use their wits to survive, often using their bodies as a sex tool.
Kikamba delves deeply into the plight of foreigners and tells a harrowing story about wanting to belong and the search for a place to call home. — Sarah Kiguwa