Somali-born Omer Abdi Dubay moved to a predominantly coloured area of the Strand near Cape Town to escape xenophobia after the anti-immigrant turmoil of 2008. But now, he said, some of his new neighbours had told him to “close our shops”.
Dubay’s continued persecution underscores the fact that foreigners still face antagonism in the townships of Cape Town.
Last Tuesday, he said, he had stood over the bodies of two Somali shopowners who were robbed and killed in Delft, a mainly coloured area in Cape Town’s northern suburbs. The dead men were apparently taking stock to their shop.
“They were shot in the head and robbed of their Nissan truck and goods. We saw their bodies on the road.”
Earlier in the year, a shop belonging to another group of Somalis in Delft was torched while the owners were sleeping upstairs, he said.
“Some people put petrol on their door and, when they [the Somalis] saw the fire, they couldn’t get out. They jumped out of the upstairs window and one broke his hands.”
In May 2008, Dubay was forced out of one of the Strand’s black informal settlements during the countrywide attacks on foreign Africans.
“I had a shop and local people took all my stuff in 2008. I had to leave with only the clothes I was wearing,” he said.
His new place of residence was “not as bad” as the black townships, Dubay said. “It’s just some residents, maybe 30%, who say we’re not supposed to open shops and that we’re eating their bread and taking their money.
“We’re foreigners and we don’t have power. We go to black areas because we’re not rich and we can afford to live there. We’re refugees.
“We open shops because we need to support ourselves,” said Dubay. “Xenophobia is not over. There is no place safe for us in South Africa.”
Assad Abdulahi, a Somali refugee displaced in 2008 and moved by court order from the Blue Waters refugee camp near Muizenberg to the city’s temporary relocation site, Blikkiesdorp, also said that there was still xenophobia in Cape Town.
“I’ve stayed here for a year and a few months. We never feel totally safe,” Abdulahi said. “We’ve been attacked and threatened here. We’ve been robbed. It’s not a safe place.
“They attack us because we’re foreigners. It’s the way they speak to us, the way they treat us when we are walking in the streets. They tell us we don’t belong here.”
Lieutenant Colonel André Traut, the spokesperson for the Western Cape police, confirmed that two Somali nationals were killed last Tuesday afternoon in the Tsunami area of Delft.
Both were unknown and thought to be in their 20s, he said. “They were attacked by three gunmen while standing in the street. The victims were each shot in the face. The motive for the killing is unknown. The suspects who fled the scene are being sought by Delft police,” said Traut.
He said that there was “no evidence to substantiate xenophobia in the Western Cape”.
“However, the police are ready to deal with any occurrence of violence which may erupt for whatever reason,” Traut said.