The Gauteng government believes it has done all it can to help reintegrate people displaced by xenophobic violence, and will close all its shelters on Friday, as supported by a court ruling.
”Really, they have been given enough time … and it was extended for a few days. We think that is enough time to arrange alternative accommodation,” spokesperson Thabo Masebe said on Tuesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Pretoria High Court dismissed an urgent application to keep temporary refugee shelters open for a while.
Judge Ephraim Makgoba said the government is not violating any rights of the more than 4 000 refugees at present housed in temporary refugee shelters in Gauteng, and is under no obligation to come up with a reintegration plan.
The judge remarked that it is not as if the government has not been managing the disaster — which followed in the wake of widespread xenophobic attacks on foreigners in the country — but said ”it had to end somewhere”.
The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (Cormsa) and the Wits Law Clinic launched the application on behalf of the province’s refugees. They said the government cannot simply leave these disenfranchised people to fend for themselves without coming up with a proper reintegration plan.
Cormsa said it has approached the government on numerous occasions in an attempt to assist with such a plan, but was simply ignored.
Counsel for the applicants, Nadine Fourie, argued that the government had not acted in good faith, as it had undertaken to reintegrate the refugees into society in a humane manner but now simply sat back and left it to them to sort out.
She said the refugees would be attacked again if they simply returned to their communities. There was no suggestion that they could return to their own countries, where their friends and families were attacked and killed.
Lawyers for Human Rights said in a supporting affidavit that some people have lost the tools of their trade, they have no transport money to go anywhere else and do not have friends or family to help them rebuild their lives.
Counsel for the government, Mike Sawyer, in turn submitted that the refugees have no rights in terms of either the Disaster Management Act or the Refugees Act to be sheltered for longer than a period of three months.
He said it is a ”faceless force of people”, not the government, who is violating the rights of the refugees. The refugees know the shelter is temporary but have taken no steps to make their own way and are now simply sitting back and trying to make their problem the government’s problem.
Rebuilding of homes
Masebe said that provincial officials have worked at telling communities not to chase the refugees from their homes, and that they have done enough to create an environment of peace and security for the refugees in these communities.
”We are convinced that conditions do exist for people to now safely return.”
He said some have also been helped with the rebuilding of their homes.
He has heard that people have lost shops and tools, but said the government is not liable for this.
”We are not liable for all of those things, but because we care about the well-being of people we help where possible. But now, we are not going to be buying tools.”
Meanwhile, Department Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said the department’s mandate is limited to processing paperwork.
It has fast-tracked the asylum-seeker verifications of the people arrested outside the Lindela repatriation facility on the West Rand and, she said, some do not qualify for asylum, and some have fraudulent papers. They are in a 10-day appeals process in which they can challenge the rejections.
In an aside, she said that in response to complaints about poor conditions at the Crown Mines home affairs offices, the department is ordering toilets to be erected outside, organising outside cleaning and crowd-control specialists, and hopes the renovations that have confined the available space will be completed by October.
In Cape Town, people sheltering in community halls have until August 31 to find somewhere else to live, and on September 3, the disaster declaration period ends, said Palesa Moduru, a communications coordinator for the displaced people.
She said they have facilitators helping people with reintegration or repatriation, depending on which option the residents there choose.
They are also collecting information on the reasons why people do not want to leave the shelters.
”We are trying to find out why they are not reintegrating,” she said. It is not yet clear on which date the other sites would close.
The Treatment Action Campaign said it is concerned that people are being ”evicted” from the shelters and said an Angolan man was murdered on Saturday while on his way back to the shelter.
While they did not make a specific link to xenophobia, they believe foreign nationals are ”particularly vulnerable” to violent crime. — Sapa