I was about to retire for the night last Thursday when a group of people came in and said: ‘Get out and give us the keys to this placeâ€. I negotiated with them and they allowed me take a few things like clothing.
I fled from my house into the township. I came back later because I had nowhere else to go. I was really scared, I couldn’t get back into the house and hid on the roof from where I made a call to the police.
They advised me to leave. They told me they couldn’t do much because they were stretched. In the morning I went to my employer’s house and stayed there.
When I went back to my house the following day [Friday] they had taken my DVD player, my television and my bed. I could only retrieve the fridge which they had not carried away. I left the fridge with friends in the township.
I came to South Africa from Zimbabwe when I was about 18, that was in 1989. But I am now a citizen, I got my ID book last year. My wife still lives in Zimbabwe with our three children. I am here to work and to support my family. I don’t know what I have done. I have been living well with my neighbours.
But when this broke out even my neighbours, people I have lived with for 13 years, were shouting: ‘He should go. He is a Kalanga†[Kalanga is a tribe found in southern Zimbabwe and the north of Botswana]. These are people I have lived with and they sold me out because they were jealous of the little that I had gathered.
Even if things return to normal I don’t think I can live with these people again. I don’t think I can go back.
I built that house myself. Before it was a tin shack and rats were getting in. I thought I should build a proper house, I built it slowly, buying a brick at a time. And now people just came and order me out. It’s painful.
I didn’t borrow from anyone to buy all these things. I earned them with the sweat of my brow. But I guess I should forget about these things, there is nothing I can do.
I can’t understand the rationale of all this. I am a citizen of this state. I was chased from my own home. I don’t know what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to go.
I guess I will work again. I still have the strength. I can’t go back to Alex. Maybe I should go back to the country of my birth. But it’s bad there too.
I was planning on my kids coming here, but not when it’s like this. There is so much suffering in Zim-babwe, but it would be better for them to stay there.
You can’t imagine the pain I went through after my ordeal. I cried the whole night. Have you ever cried the whole night? I thought I was going to get hypertension or something. I talked to some people who were displaced like me. Some suggested we should douse the whole street with petrol and burn the whole neighbourhood. I firmly said no. We can’t do that. We shouldn’t [take] revenge. God is for us all. He is the one who should judge. You see all these kids? Can you imagine them dead? I said no. We would hurt many innocent people who have nothing to do with this thuggery.
What I can’t understand about this is how would foreign-based South Africans react if other countries in the world chased them away? That would be barbaric.
Do you remember that during apartheid South Africans were living in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Britain and many other places? I wonder how this violence will end but I know many people will die.
Did you see the picture of the man who was burnt to death? How can women watch someone burn to death and laugh?
Why did they give me citizenship? So that mobs burn me while some people laugh?