Sunday
The battles raging on the streets of Jeppestown on Sunday couldn’t crack my journalistic composure, but Mohamed made me cry. He’s seven years old, beautiful and sparky and he’s been driven from his home because he has a Tanzanian father.
Mohamed Fall was born in Johannesburg General Hospital, his mother is South African and he is in grade 2 at John Mitchell Primary in Jeppestown. Until Saturday night they lived in the Radium hotel in Jeppestown. “At night they came, they were hitting the gate. They made a big noise and they chased us,” Mohamed says. He watched as they destroyed the hotel he has called home for most of his life. “They broke the bar and they took the beers and the coins and the money.”
And he watched as they tried to assault his mother, Tracy Aspelling, accusing her of being a Zimbabwean. She survived because she is from Port Elizabeth and managed to convince them of this. That wasn’t enough to save their home or belongings, though. “We just left our stuff and ran,” says Aspelling. As they ran, they saw the neighbourhood being destroyed by looters: “They have sticks and they hit the shops and steal clothes,” Mohamed told me. “I think they’re sick.
“We don’t know where to sleep so we came here,” he says. Tracy is adamant that she will not be driven out of the country. “I was born here. I am not going anywhere.” Mohamed is less sure: “It will happen again,” he says matter of factly. “I don’t feel nice — I feel bad.”
As he sits in the courtyard of the police station on Sunday afternoon, in his neatly pressed coffee-coloured shirt and shorts, he seems remarkably composed. Both he and his mother seem determined to continue as normal. She plans to go to work the next day. “I need to go to school tomorrow,” Mohamed tells me resolutely. Then his face falls as he remembers afresh: “They broke our house and took my uniform.”
Mohamed doesn’t go to school on Monday. The number of refugees in the police station has doubled overnight. New, bloodied victims continue to stream in and the police are reluctant to let anyone out. His mother doesn’t have the money for school transport anyway — her purse was one of the first things the mob stole. “My mom said I mustn’t go to school.”
Mohamed feels reassured because he is not the only one missing school — lots more children have turned up, including twins Annie and Rose Bofonge (8), who are in his grade 2 class at John Mitchell. They sit under a marquee erected for mothers with children, playing clapping games and giggling. “We only got oranges and sweets yesterday. I was hungry at night. It was cold at night and I had only a small blanket.”
At lunchtime the food supply in the makeshift refugee camp is erratic. “I just got food now, two slices of bread,” Mohamed says. It’s the first thing he’s eaten all day. His mother has somehow managed to get out of the station and go to her job at a shop in the area. She is terrified she will be replaced if she doesn’t show up and also of being unemployed and homeless. Having an income is her only chance of rebuilding her family when this madness has passed. As I leave, Mohamed extracts two promises from me — that I will come see him the next day and that I spread the word: “Tell them we are not the foreigners. We are the South Africans.”
Tuesday
By Tuesday evening the children are all a lot more subdued. Days of sleeping outdoors in Jo’burg’s winter, of overcrowding, inadequate food and nowhere to wash are taking their toll. Mohamed’s clothes are dirty and crumpled and he appears to have lost a shoe. A local resident has brought him a jersey to put over his short-sleeved shirt and shorts. Women sing and dance, clapping and stamping among the towering piles of bags and belongings, trying to keep their spirits up and to keep warm. Mohamed’s mother sits on a bundle of someone’s possessions, her arm around her child, staring dully at what has become her world in the past few days. They don’t feel much like talking.