In the space of just a few weeks, the status of refugees fleeing xenophobic violence has gone from victim to offender. The official line is that they are at best ungrateful and at worst criminals who have something to hide.
The crisis at the Glenanda camp last week was sparked when the government told refugees to apply for new registration cards or face deportation. Those who refused say they were threatened, their movements restricted and they were denied food and water before being taken to the Lindela immigration detention centre.
In theory, registering for the permit is a good way for the minister of home affairs to offer protection and documentation, on special grounds, to large numbers of foreign nationals. The permit, issued in terms of section 31(2) of the Immigration Act, offers a six-month guarantee against deportation.
But for those who have been involved in the tortuous process of getting refugee or asylum seeker status — which can take up to 10 years — it is seen as a step backwards and raised fears that their hard-won status will be erased and they will be pushed to the back of home affairs’s queue when the six-month period expires.
The kragdadige tactics employed by camp management and government have not helped allay their fears: the registration forms were accompanied by a pamphlet that reads ”failure to register will have negative consequences including the termination of assistance and protection by the government and may lead to your removal from the Republic of South Africa”.
The threat of deportation has inflamed an already difficult situation. ”It’s like you become a newcomer,” said Burundian refugee Andre Muntu. ”We are not here because we don’t have papers, we are here because we are victims of xenophobia.”
It’s a view supported by Jacob van Garderen of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), who pointed out that there is ”no reason for anyone with an asylum seeker permit or refugee status to apply to be registered to ensure they are not deported”.
Gauteng provincial government spokesperson Thabo Masebe said last week that failure to register could lead to deportation: ”We can take away their refugee status if they don’t respect the laws of this country.”
Not so, said Van Garderen: ”The failure to register may constitute a breach for those who do not have refugee, asylum seeker or other immigration permits. The Immigration Act requires all foreign nationals in South Africa to have the requisite permit. However, no law, regulation or directive has been gazetted that requires documented asylum seekers or refugees to register.”
He pointed out that the Refugees Act ”very clearly states that you cannot deport a refugee or asylum seeker if they risk persecution in their country of origin”.
Masebe also played into stereotypes about foreigners as a source of crime, hinting that those who didn’t want to register were reluctant to do so because there were ”other things” which made them reluctant to have their fingerprints taken.
The government is determined to paint this as a purely administrative exercise, with Masebe saying the registration process was simply to control access to the camp. But the refugees pointed out that the camps are due to close in a week or two anyway and that they have been through numerous registration processes since they were at the Jeppe police station, including being registered with the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
The registration form for the new permits contains a declaration that applicants will forfeit any claims to social grants or identity documents. Refugees and asylum seekers said they were not prepared to sign away rights to which they are entitled under refugee law.
They said many of the forms were presented to them with incorrect information already filled in, such as stating they are not refugees and the only assistance they require is transport home.
Masebe denied allegations that those who refused to register for the new permits were denied food, water and even access to toilets, but the media and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) were barred from the camp, making it impossible to establish if this is true.
”This heavy-handed approach doesn’t yield results,” said Van Garderen. ”It comes as no surprise that people are confused — the government communication strategy has been appalling, based on threats and half-truths.”
For some groups, including the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, the permits offer a way to regularise their presence in the country.
But Van Garderen said that while LHR initially applauded the decision to issue the permits, ”instead of using this to provide security and freedom, the Department of Home Affairs is now using this as a measure for control and to prevent a vulnerable group from accessing humanitarian assistance”.
UNHCR regional representative Sanda Kimbimbi said he was aware that last Monday camp managers at Glenanda had decided to give food first to those holding the new cards, but that they had assured him the rest would be fed later. ”That place had to be managed carefully and I’m not going to criticise their decisions.”
He said that MSF had been barred from the camp because it had been ”disruptive”. He had been informed that it was ”playing to the media” by treating refugees who had been injured in a clash with police ”in full view of the cameras”.
Kimbimbi added MSF had bought newspaper space criticising the UNHCR. He said he saw no reason why the media should be allowed into the camp, adding that South Africans were ”very harsh” towards the government, which in his opinion was ”extremely cooperative” in refugee affairs.
Kimbimbi denied that camp residents had been subjected to intimidation: ”I don’t think the tone from government is threatening, I think it has been the right one.”
He denied that refugees and asylum seekers were signing away any rights, asserting that applying for a new permit would not affect the validity of refugee status or asylum seeker permits.
Kimbimbi’s view was that the refugees’ fears are ”nothing to do with people reading the fine print” but a stratagem to create a crisis to put pressure on the UNHCR to resettle the refugees in countries like the United States or Canada.
Kimbimbi denied that refugees being held at Lindela would be deported but said there was no guarantee for asylum-seekers, who would now be interviewed by the department in a ”fast track” process and a determination made on their status.
Refugees who contacted the Mail & Guardian on Wednesday night said those who had been found to have valid refugee and asylum seeker permits had been thrown out of Lindela. They were allegedly told to make their way back to their home countries or find somewhere else to live.
Kimbimbi denied this, saying the refugees had left of their own accord, but that no one would be readmitted to the camps.
By Thursday morning, a crowd of about 700 people was still gathered across the road from Lindela, with nowhere to go and no money to get there.
‘I feel like I’m in prison’
Two months ago, Shadrack Mampuku (14) and his family were driven from their home in Johannesburg’s inner city by a howling mob bent on killing them. They lost everything except the clothes they stood up in and spent weeks living in the courtyard of the Jeppe police station during a particularly bitter winter.
In early June the M&G reported how Shadrack had walked out of the police station and gone back to school, heartened by a visit from his South African schoolmates, and still daring to believe that the fragments of his life could be glued back together.
Not long afterwards the family was sent to the Glenanda refugee camp in the south of Johannesburg and he hasn’t attended school since. He has lost all hope of resuming a normal life in South Africa and lost all confidence in the people he should trust: the police, the government, the international humanitarian agencies.
Shadrack’s family are refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), fleeing the horror of a conflict that saw more than 2 000 people killed each day and widespread use of rape as an instrument of terror. Having survived the xenophobic attacks in May, they are too terrified to stay in South Africa and want the UNHCR to resettle them: ”I want to go anywhere as long as it’s outside South Africa — we can’t go back to our own country,” says his mother, Madu Mesanga.
The children are terrified because officials — including the minister of home affairs — threatened that anyone without the new registration card would be deported back to their home countries. They feel there is nowhere for them to turn and reintegrating with people who raped, battered and killed foreigners just eight weeks ago is unthinkable.
”I never want to go back to the city, they will [try to] kill me again,” says Shadrack. ”We ran away from our countries because of war, now South Africa is making war against us.”
”Look at the police,” he says, gesturing towards a phalanx of Nyalas ringing the camp. ”Are we criminals? I’m scared they will come and shoot us.”
In the eyes of the children the police have gone from protectors to prison guards.
The kids hang on the wire fence surrounding the camp, stretching their hands through the links, desperate for some contact with the outside world. ”I feel like I’m in prison,” says Shadrack. ”I’m not free. I just sit here and watch the cars going by.”
By Wednesday, Shadrack and his family had been removed from Glenanda and were being held in Lindela. They were told they were to be deported to the DRC.