It’s freezing cold under a grey sky. Discarded pictures from a child’s colouring book swirl in the wind. A whistle blows and hundreds of people camping at the Jeppe police station scramble to form an unruly queue in front of huge, silver cooking pots. Supper is served; today it’s soup.
A boy stands motionless in the midst of the flurry. A stream of urine flows over his left foot. He turns, trying to cover the stain on his pants, and runs for the row of portable toilets.
More than 1 000 foreigners are now staying on a patch of grass behind the Jeppe police station, having sought refuge there after the outbreak of anti-foreigner violence that swept through Johannesburg two weeks ago. Refugees from their own countries, they are now on the run again.
They are fed by volunteers, twice a day. It’s starchy food: usually rice and vegetables, or pap. At meal times, there’s a stampede.
“When it’s time to eat, people are always pushing us down and running us over,” says Shadrack Mapuku (13), who is dressed in a thin denim jacket and a T-shirt. “A man nearly raped a child the other night. She is 13. She screamed and someone helped her.”
Reaja Kabeya (14), a tall, softly spoken child, says he feels scared.
“If I don’t go back to school, I might fail,” says Kabeya, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “And then I would not be able to study and become a doctor overseas.”
He adds: “I don’t want to go back to my country, I want to go somewhere far from here where there is peace. I want to have a life. I don’t want my children to see all of these things.
“People are not opening their eyes. They are not using their heads. I wish I could change the world, change all this racism. We are all humans. We all have eyes. We are all equal. And some people will hit us for no reason. People are fighting the whole time. This situation is crazy and it is making everyone mad.”
Olgah Magwengasa, a thin child who looks at least five years younger than her 17 years, says: “Our country is not even civilised. My family came here so that we can be free, so that we can go to school like normal children. But children at school are also mean. The children call us refugees and they tell the Zimbabwean children that they don’t have food at home.”
Many Congolese citizens made their way to South Africa to escape the war in their own country, which drew in nine African nations and directly affected the lives of an estimated 50-million people. For these children from the DRC, death, rape and violence now seem to be part of everyday life, no matter where they go.
Bibiche Betu Kumesu, another DRC national, rocks her tiny baby, Semeon, trying unsuccessfully to shush her cries. She says her husband and two children were killed during the war in her home country.
“My baby is sick now. It’s because we had to sleep outside for four days before the women and children were moved into the building. I have no family left. It’s only my baby and me. And now he is sick,” she says in a high-pitched voice.
Men at the Jeppe police station are still sleeping outside, where heaps of wet blankets are drying out on the grass following heavy showers the previous night.
It’s 6pm and night is yet to come.