”The men, women and children in these community halls and refugee camps are shattered and hopeless. They have no sense of any future and most are not prepared to try reintegrating with South African society because their trust has been broken in a very profound way.”
This was the assessment of a Cape Town psychologist who has been providing counselling to the survivors of xenophobic violence confined to halls and tented camps across the Cape peninsula.
She cannot be named for professional reasons.
Groups of psychologists, psychiatric nurses and social workers have been counselling those who escaped the violence on a voluntary basis. The Mail & Guardian interviewed three therapists this week, all of whom said they felt ”completely powerless” given the scale of assistance needed.
”We are responding to an emergency. Dealing with the victims of these attacks on foreigners is making us deal with the deep wounds facing the continent — depravation, poverty and envy of those who have, whether it’s power or money,” one therapist said.
She added: ”After a month’s counselling, I’m overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness in the face of so much deprivation. The government and South African society have failed miserably to protect the most vulnerable — both the refugees and those who attacked them.”
The psychologist emphasised that she could not offer standard therapy. ”All we can do is make human contact. Often we just sit with children when their parents are exhausted or listen to parents talk and talk. It’s about bearing witness and listening.
”People feel a strong need to talk about the time when they were attacked and chased from their homes. They need to talk about the fear, the loss and their sense of their future, which has been destroyed.
”Everything about their lives is now uncertain,” said one professional.
She added that the psychologists could ”simply support and affirm people” in the hope that this would enable them to cope better with their lives.
One of the therapists emphasised that the refugees were coping with ”layers and layers of trauma”.
”These are people who left their original homes, often fleeing wars, famine and persecution. We are trying to help them help each other; this is difficult because they are stressed and angry.”
Two of the psychologists interviewed said that paradoxically, men came forward for therapy more readily than women. ”Patriarchal attitudes give them the confidence, even though their manhood has been hugely undermined. They’re powerless to protect their families and don’t feel like men because they’re destitute.”
This therapist said the children in the centres ”are extremely anxious, irritable and unsettled. They feel their parents’ anxiety and uncertainty and they act out”.
”The women are just so hurt and traumatised — they often are suffering from repeated trauma which makes intervention difficult.”
Two weeks ago Somali refugees at the Soetwater camp, Cape Town’s largest, walked into the sea while threatening to commit suicide. On Monday the camps were hit by gale force winds which destroyed 40 tents at refugee camps across Cape Town. Groups of women and children have been sleeping in the toilets since then.
Last week the M&G reported that the Western Cape government has supplied enough food for 700 people in a camp which houses 3 500.
One of the refugees, who asked not to be named, said some inmates had stopped using the showers and brushing their teeth and were unwilling to get up in the morning.
”I don’t know what to say to them — the women cry all the time and the men just stare. People are angry and scared, and nobody talks about anything except what they’ve heard will to happen to us,” he said.
Aids Law Project spokesperson Fatima Hassan called Soetwater a ”disaster”.
”It’s a terrible camp — it doesn’t meet international norms and standards. It’s an indictment on all South Africans and a sign of the callousness of the city and the province that it still exists.