The Mogale city municipality was on Friday trying to arrange accommodation for hundreds of xenophobia refugees milling around outside the Lindela repatriation centre on the West Rand, who said they had nowhere to go.
”We have all agreed, this is about human beings sleeping on the side of the road, a national road, and it is wrong,” said Bongani Gaeje, a spokesperson for the municipality.
”We are trying to agree to get them to move to a place of shelter,” he said.
A number of sites had been identified and representatives of the group had gone with officials to inspect them. Gaeje said they were ”quite excited”.
The centres were near Randfontein, a mining and industrial town about an hour’s drive from Johannesburg.
However, on consultation with the rest of the group, the idea was rejected. They had left the line of dialogue open, and were hoping to come to an agreement with those stranded.
”We can’t have children of two, five years, standing on the side of the road,” said Gaeje.
Gaeje said when they heard reports of people sleeping on the side of the road, they went to take a look. Private and government organisations came to provide water, food, sanitation, baby supplies as well as a mobile clinic.
These people were among the refugees taken from the Glenanda xenophobia shelter in Johannesburg on Tuesday to Lindela, a facility that detains foreigners believed to be in the country illegally, and who are then either released or deported.
A man who called himself John-John, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, said when people left the Glenanda shelter, they did so because they thought they would immediately be sent back to their home countries.
”We are ready to be deported back to our home countries,” he said.
However, when they arrived at Lindela, they were made to stay in cells. Many refused to do so.
”We are not criminals. We have got our papers. Your government doesn’t have the right to arrest and put us in Lindela.”
It’s very hard with a family
He was part of a group that refused to register for documents that would have allowed them to stay in the country for six months and to remain in the Glenanda camp until it closed.
The group feared these would cancel residence rights they had already secured, although the government had said this would not happen. Others said they did not understand instructions given to them at the time.
In terms of a government arrangement, residents at the camp who could not produce documents were invited to register their details in exchange for being allowed to stay in the country for six months.
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees in South Africa said she personally explained their options in three different languages.
John-John said they were not given any food at Lindela and when they tried to get a policeman to buy them some bread, he was stopped from doing so.
He said people could not go back to their old neighbourhoods because they had nothing left there. Most had been renting rooms.
”[If we go back] that means we are going to stay on the street … it’s very hard with a family.”
He said he stayed at Lindela for two days but refused to go into the cells.
Attempts were now being made to speak to NGOs and the UN High Commission for Refugees to arrange for them to be moved to another country. ”If they can organise just to send us out of South Africa,” he said. Even a neighbouring country like Botswana would be acceptable.
He said charity Gift of the Givers was giving them food at the moment.
”We are suffering. We have got children. At night it is very cold. We don’t know what we can do in this position.”
Thirty four-year-old Tresor, a fitter and turner from Burundi, said: ”I am so confused, I don’t know what to do.”
He said he didn’t even know where the West Rand was in relation to the rest of the country.
When the attacks, which left more than 60 people dead, started in May, he had been living in Fairview, Johannesburg. Police, however, advised him he would not be safe there. He left the house and eventually sought refuge at Glenanda, and, while there, tried to return to Fairview.
However, said Tresor, when he arrived in Fairview, people began intimidating him, so he returned to Glenanda.
”We are not free there anymore,” he said.
He said the registration option was not explained properly at Glenanda.
”They never told us anything; we just see people from home affairs, forcing us,” he said.
”I cannot ask the government to do something for me. Since 1994, people were promised houses, jobs. South African people themselves are suffering. We beg the government to make the townships safer.”
Favourable
Meanwhile, the Gauteng provincial government said on Friday that conditions for reintegration of those affected by the xenophobic violence were favourable, but observers disagreed.
Gauteng provincial government spokesperson Thabo Masebe said councillors, community workers and politicians were working towards creating a culture of tolerance in the province and police were monitoring the areas affected by the violence.
”It’s the kind of work that we will see going on for the next few months,” he said.
Loren Landau, director of the Wits Forced Migration studies programme, believed the government was not keeping its public commitments made during the violence, nor addressing some of the fundamental issues.
There were fears of a resurgence of the violence and people needed to understand the tensions and explain what it meant to live in a democracy and a multi-ethnic society.
”I would have liked to have seen that message coming through much stronger,” said Landau.
South African Council of Churches secretary general Eddie Makue said security was the biggest concern for the displaced people.
”It’s like saying to an abused woman, ‘Go back to your husband’,” said Makue. — Sapa