A Congolese woman wept quietly on Thursday as she described how her family were hounded when they tried to return to their shack in a Cape Town squatter settlement last week.
”I’m tired of this country, please, please,” said mother-of-five Agnes Saidi. ”I want another country. I’m tired of this country.”
Saidi is one of several xenophobia refugees who earlier addressed a media briefing on what they said are difficult conditions at the sites in the Cape Town area where they have been staying since the outbreak of violence against foreigners at the end of May.
She, her husband, Raimond-Omari, and their children — the youngest of whom is three years old, went to the Soetwater tent camp when the violence broke out.
Saidi, who still carries bruises on her face from a beating she received from a neighbour in the Kosovo settlement, said her husband and eldest son went back to their shack last week in the hope it would be safe enough to stay there again.
However, on Friday night a group of youths yelling ”Go home, makwerekwere [foreigners],” forced their way in and stole the family’s television set and a DVD player.
On Saturday night, youths again tried to enter the shack, breaking a hole in a wall and smashing a window with a gun.
A bullet — which she brought to the media briefing wrapped in a piece of tissue — was found on the floor below the window afterwards.
She said when she herself went to Kosovo after the incidents, a neighbour told her she should go back to her country.
”He said if you stay here you going to die,” she said.
When she reported the incident to police, they referred her to the ward councillor, who referred her back to the police.
Saidi said she wants to live in a place where her children were ”free” and can go to school.
”I want … the government of South Africa [to] to call the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]. It’s going to come help us.
She and the other refugees at the briefing complained about conditions at the camps, which still house about 6 000 people.
They said that at Soetwater, a campsite on the Atlantic coast, there is no proper healthcare, and people with coughs and pneumonia are given only paracetamol.
They said toilets are not cleaned properly, and refugees have problems keeping warm in the draughty tents.
The blankets that have been supplied give off a ”powder” that is causing respiratory problems.
There are no lights in some of the tents, and the children, who are unable to go to school, lack warm clothing.
‘Completely inhumane’
Prosper Tafa, a Zimbabwean who was rehoused from Soetwater to a more protected camp at Bluewater on the Cape Flats, said the food at the new site is ”unbelievable”.
Families are being served cold meals, even in the current wintry conditions. The menu never changes from a constant diet of rice and ”peas” — apparently lentils.
”We feel the way we are being treated is not human,” he said.
In a statement released at Thursday’s briefing, a group of organisations, including the Treatment Action Campaign, the Black Sash and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, said the situation in the camps and other ”safety sites” around Cape Town remains a crisis.
They condemned what they said is a lack of action from all three tiers of government. They also expressed concern that legal advisers and Human Rights Commission monitors have been denied access to camps.
”Once again, civil society calls for major improvements in living conditions in the camps, and action on the part of government in resolving this crisis,” they said.
A volunteer working at Soetwater, Tracey Saunders, said conditions there have got progressively worse over the past six weeks and are now ”completely inhumane”.
She said it seems as if the authorities’ approach is that if they forget about the refugees for long enough, they will just go away. — Sapa