NGOs and church groups used their wait for Friday’s Constitutional Court ruling on shelters for displaced xenophobia refugees to lobby people living there on what sort of help they needed.
A representative for Lawyers for Human Rights spoke to groups of people over the barbed wire fence, and urged them not to do anything that would lead to their arrest.
She also explained the rights that they enjoyed under immigration laws.
Another group, the Africa Diaspora Forum, noted people’s names, the number of their family members, whether they had jobs and what material assistance they would need.
Another refugee organisation, the Coordinating Body of Refugee Committees, walked around the perimeter of the shelter in Germiston, stopping periodically to ask people questions.
Theo Nshimiyimana said they were concerned about the future of the people there as it appeared that many would not get asylum papers as hoped.
He said everybody was made to write a statement on a small piece of paper, and that most could not speak English, so they may not have completed their applications properly.
Earlier, the Department of Home Affairs said people who did not qualify for asylum status would have 10 days to appeal.
Whether they waited out their appeal at the shelters, or at the Lindela repatriation centre on Johannesburg’s West Rand, would depend on whether the Constitutional Court ruled that the shelters should remain open.
A group of lawyers have argued they should not close until a proper reintegration plan was produced.
Inside the camp, South African Red Cross Society workers and Médecins sans Frontières doctors sat amongst the hundreds of people awaiting to hear their fate.
Church ministers were also present, including from the Methodist church, whose Johannesburg central ministry had been helping refugees and asylum seekers for a number of years.
Meanwhile, the mantra from the refugees in the camp was that they did not know where to go, and were scared to go back to their original communities.
Further into the camp, life appeared to continue as normal as people did their laundry and peeled vegetables bound for pots bubbling on small fires.
A small spaza shop sold cabbage, washing powder and cooking oil with the strains of loud music wafting over the tents. — Sapa