/ 28 May 2008

Govt: Refugee-camp reports ‘not true’

The government has denied deciding to set up refugee camps for foreigners displaced by xenophobic violence.

Reports suggesting such a move were ”baseless and therefore not true”, the Government Communication and Information System said in a statement on Wednesday.

”The government has noted with concern media reports that the Cabinet has taken a decision to establish refugee camps. The government wishes to put it on the record that the Cabinet has not taken such a decision and that the reports are baseless and therefore not true,” said the statement.

An announcement on the government’s position would be made at a news briefing on Thursday to report on this week’s fortnightly Cabinet meeting.

The BBC website on Wednesday reported that seven refugee camps are to be set up around the country for foreigners who have fled the xenophobic attacks.

The holding camps would take up to 70 000 people who flocked to state and municipal buildings with increasingly unsanitary conditions, the BBC said. The government decision ”comes despite strong advice from respected international aid agencies”, it added.

Earlier in the day, the Department of Home Affairs said centres housing displaced foreigners were ”temporary shelters” and not ”refugee camps”.

Siobhan McCarthy, the chief director of communications at the Department of Home Affairs, denied that ”refugee camps” would be established, and preferred the term ”temporary shelters”.

The move was planned to ”to bring relief to police stations and community halls that are housing foreigners”.

”South Africa does not subscribe to refugee camps, so these shelters can’t be long term,” McCarthy told the Mail & Guardian Online.

”By separating foreigners from the rest of society, you label them as people who do not belong here. After 1994, our country has been strongly against separating people,” she said.

McCarthy said the government’s decision to set up shelters was to ensure that displaced migrants had access to health services, food and sanitation. These shelters would accommodate up to 2 000 people, which would assist the government in ”managing who comes and who goes”.

”The challenges [the conditions at police stations and community halls] are very critical, that’s why we are doing this.”

McCarthy said that by Monday night, there were an estimated 17 000 displaced foreigners left in Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, a long-term solution to the problem was still being sought by the government. McCarthy said there was ”nothing definitive” yet in this regard.

An inter-ministerial tasked team — including home affairs, health, education, safety and security, intelligence and the minister in the presidency — was probing the matter and would devise long term solutions to the problem.

Tents to house between three and five people would be pitched at the shelters, which would be situated on land and empty buildings ”close to the communities where the foreigners fled from”.

The shelters should be up and running by the end of the week, said McCarthy

Médécins Sans Frontières, the medical charity, was quoted as saying conditions for people seeking refuge in existing shelters were worsening.

Fifty-six people have been killed and more than 650 injured in the attacks that started in Alexandra on May 11.

Inequality

Meanwhile, inequality was at the heart of the xenophobia sweeping through the country, academics suggested at the University of the Witwatersrand on Wednesday.

The government claimed to have done more to address poverty since 1994 than any other developing country and indeed had, economics Professor Stephen Gelb told a colloquium on the recent spate of attacks on foreigners.

”Poverty and inequality are not the same thing and cannot be treated by politicians as if they are,” he said.

The problem of poverty was extremely deep and intractable.

”The problem of inequality is equally deep and intractable.”

While it was clear that the government had addressed poverty, it was ”equally clear inequality has not been addressed at all”.

Inequality was ”extreme” and had actually worsened since 1994, Gelb pointed out.

Inequality could only be addressed by the transfer and building of assets such as education, skills, land and houses.

Only asset ownership would persuade people they had prospects and hope for the future.

”The government hasn’t succeeded at all in asset building and transfer.”

Law Professor Cathi Albertyn told the meeting South Africa’s Constitution did not protect only the rights of South Africans, but those of everyone.

”Human dignity has no nationality,” she said.

Disaster areas

Meanwhile, the Western Cape provincial government said on Wednesday it is to ask for parts of the province to be declared disaster areas in a bid to deal with the refugee crisis.

The decision, announced after a meeting of the provincial cabinet on Wednesday, followed a call by Cape Town mayor Helen Zille for the United Nations to be asked to step in.

About 6 600 refugees are housed in six special camps set up by the city for those displaced by the recent violence, and another 12 000 are scattered at other venues across the city.

Premier Ebrahim Rasool’s office said his cabinet had asked the provincial disaster management centre to urgently prepare an application to the national government to declare parts of the Western Cape disaster areas.

”Such a disaster declaration will allow for adequate flow of resources to assist all Cape citizens to better manage the humanitarian relief efforts,” the statement said.

”It is a call for resources, not a signal of panic.”

The statement said calls for the deployment of the army — Zille wanted it as a peacekeeping force while refugees were being reintegrated into communities — was ”a distraction and not something required”.

”Those who call for it have provided no proof that the situation is out of control or that the police are not managing.

”If the situation changes, the army is available.”