HSRC - Housing to blame

It's amazing that it's always something else.. Now the HSRC blames the housing situation...

Housing policy was identified as a trigger for the outbreak of xenophobic attacks, a report by the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) revealed on Wednesday. (News 24)

"The housing policy needs to be revisited urgently. Housing is a complex issue and is one of the issues that sparked xenophobic violence in various areas around country,"

"Immigrants should be regulated. They need to be introduced to customs, practice and sensitivities of the country. The local councillors need to be educated about migration and South Africa's role globally,"

said HSRC director Adrian Hadland

Schwartzers get out hand at immigration centre

Chaos erupted at the Nyanga Immigration Centre yesterday.....

Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said it was unclear what sparked the incident, "but some clients waiting outside had thrown stones at security officers and at clients on the site"... (it was them....)

Several queuing men and women said they were beaten and pepper-sprayed by police.

"There were too many of them who wanted to be helped, so they pushed and shoved," said police spokesperson Jannie Wentzel from Bishop Lavis. According to an inspector at the scene, no pepper spray was used, Wentzel said. (Ehe - eet wasn't us!)

An emotional asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo said: "They hit people. They hit people with sticks and they are not allowed to do that." Since arriving three months ago, he had visited Home Affairs once a week. (this kwerekwere is a bit late to the party!)

McCarthy said the crowding was not related to appeals by displaced foreigners staying in the safety camps. (It has something to do with the fact that the camps have been / are being closed)

Schwartzers get second dose of Murambatsvina as Tshwane Council razes camp

Hundreds of Schwartzers immigrants, displaced by xenophobic attacks which hit most parts of South Africa ’s Gauteng Province in May, are now living under sub-human conditions, after the host government razed their safety camps.

On Monday last week, the South African government dismantled the last remaining safety camp, Akasia, in the capital Pretoria, which housed more than 300 victims of the xenophobic violence, which rocked Gauteng and left more than 60 people, most of them foreign nationals, dead.

“I will stay here because there is nowhere else for me to go. I cannot just return to those people, who chased me away in such a violent manner,” said Benson Shoko, a Zimbabwean father of two, who comes from Masvingo.

“The camps have all closed and we are re-integrating these people back to their societies. There is no way they can remain in isolation forever,” said Tshwane Mayor, Gwen Ramogkapa..... Thanks Gwen... Perhaps you meant to say... "We have razed the camps, pulled down all infrastructure there was there, shoved the people into the open and either zey reingrate or zey vil die!"

Chaos expected as refugee camps close

The Harmony Park safety camp is to be closed on Friday and civil society groups say they expect "chaos and homelessness" to follow for asylum seekers, 250 of whom have not yet heard the results of their applications.

Provincial Disaster Management spokesperson Hildegard Fast says the government is committed to closing the camps as soon as possible, but is "working very carefully to understand what the options are" for unresolved cases.

According to a joint city and provincial government statement on Tuesday, 1 968 displaced people from other African countries remain in Western Cape camps.

In Cape Town, the Harmony Park camp is to close on Friday, Youngsfield next Friday and Blue Waters by the end of October.

"Sixty people who have said they want to be repatriated as well as vulnerable people who are young, old, disabled or sick will be accommodated at Blue Waters (until then)," the statement said.

The Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) Scott Dunlop said: "There is confusion among people living in the camps who don't understand what their options are."

The repatriation process could take several weeks for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to complete. Meanwhile, the foreigners would be sent back into South African communities they feared.

"This is unacceptable."

Dunlop expected "chaos and homelessness" and said civil society groups would monitor developments.

"The government's taking actions that result in people being homeless is unlawful."

But Fast said: "We understand what the legal framework is and we operate within it."

Fast said many asylum seekers had not made themselves available to receive their forms.

Of the 250 awaiting asylum decisions, Department of Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said a team would return to Harmony Park to see if the applicants were there.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR in Geneva, Switzerland, has announced it is to investigate the response of its Pretoria office to the xenophobic crisis.

The UNHCR's decision follows a 24-page complaint sent to it on Monday by 15 civil society groups and two volunteers in Cape Town.

In a statement, the UNHCR said: "To ensure full objectivity and transparency, an inquiry will be conducted that will include a senior staff member designated by UNHCR's office of the inspector general, one person designated by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and one person designated by the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response.

"We will expect a report on their inquiry in the next few weeks."

Yusuf Hassan, spokesperson for the UNHCR, confirmed the statement. The organisation would "wait for the committee's inquiry and its investigation", he said.

Fatima Hassan, of the Aids Law Project, said she was "very pleased" with this "groundbreaking" development. - Cape Times

Eight foreigners killed re-intergrating

Two of the Western Cape province's three refugee camps are to close by Friday, but reintegrated families say they have been attacked by locals and a volunteer at one of the camps says eight refugees have been killed since returning to communities.

Men and women waited at the entrance to the Harmony Park camp, near Strand, on Sunday to be transported to nearby communities. Many of the tents were empty, and some had been dismantled.

Two reintegrated women said their lives had been threatened on Friday night at the nearby Nomzamo settlement.

"About two in the morning, men came to the window and said we must give them our money or they would kill us. They said they knew we had been given money by the camp," said Eneresi Namakunde, who is from Zimbabwe.


Namakunde and her friend, Jessy Pamburai, said they escaped and slept on the street.

"Now we don't have anywhere to go. We don't have anything."

Camp spokesperson John Kisomezi said at least two families and two men had also returned.

"They had been beaten all over their bodies," he said.

Mercy Katuruza, from Zimbabwe, said: "We are scared, but there is nothing we can do."

Katuruza is to be reintegrated before Wednesday, but is worried about Thomas Sithole, an HIV-positive Mozambican for whom she has been caring.

In a nearly empty tent, Sithole lay in bed on Sunday at lunch. He appeared thin and sickly.

The department of home affairs has said he must return to Mozambique within 14 days, but doctors have told him he needs to stay and go on a course of anti-retrovirals, without which he will not survive.

"He cannot begin the ARVs now because they may not be available in Mozambique," Kataruza said.

"It's not safe for him to go."

Hildegarde Fast, head of the Western Cape Disaster Management Centre, said she could not comment specifically on Sithole's case, but he should speak to the camp co-ordinator.

Katuraza said camp authorities were aware of Sithole, but she did not trust that they could care for him.

"When we were packing our things, no one gave Thomas his food that day."

Fast said reintegration was a work in progress and that once the camps closed, the government would continue to create safe conditions for refugees.

"Facilitators have been deployed in communities people fled from. They are working with community leaders."

There had been successes, Fast said. Three reconciliation events had been held throughout the province. But Tracey Saunders, a volunteer, said she did not trust this explanation.

"Where are these facilitators? And what are they doing?"

Eight of the people from the Soetwater camp alone had been murdered since returning to communities, Saunders said.

She said the work the facilitators were doing needed to be made visible to refugees in the camps who feared for their lives. - Cape Times

Xenophobia crisis control costs city R100m

The cost of managing the xenophobic crisis that erupted in the city has soared to more than R100-million.

And to date the government has not reimbursed a single cent of the money, which means the city's safety and security department's spending has gone more than R50-million over its annual budget.

A report submitted to the council's portfolio committee on Monday by the city's director of budgets, Johan Steyl, indicated that the city had submitted its third claim of R25,8-million last month on the back of its first claim of R70,7-million in June, and another R5,6-million in August.

These are all claims for actual costs incurred.

Steyl said the city had followed its agreement with the provincial government on managing the crisis and related financial costs to the letter, which included that the submission of claims be made to this level of government, which would then forward them to the Treasury.

He said the city's disaster management centre had liaised with the provincial department on the reimbursement of its money, but to date had received no formal response.

The finance committee decided that the matter should be brought to the attention of the mayoral committee, with a view to it being discussed at its next meeting next week.

The city is incurring ongoing costs as it still accommodates just more than 2 000 refugees in three sites in the city, five months since the violence against foreign nationals broke out in the townships.

- Cape Argus

Wiped out in SA

A Somali mother and her three children were killed in their shop in Tambo village near Queenstown last week. This was barely a month after they decided to leave a Cape Town refugee camp and reintegrate themselves into the community.

On the advice of government mediators Saida Mohamed and her children, aged 13, 10 and eight, left the Youngsfield refugee camp for what they hoped would be safer residence in the Eastern Cape. Mohamed's remaining family members, still in the Blue Waters refugee camp outside Muizenberg, now expect to be deported to Somalia, a country in the grip of civil war.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) visited the Somali community in Queenstown on Wednesday this week to compile a report on the incident.

Mohamed and her children, who had been in South Africa for almost three years, had a spaza shop in Khayelitsha Site C, which was looted and destroyed on May 23. Neighbours told her to leave the township. Told by government mediators that it was safe to leave, she decided that the Eastern Cape would be safer than Khayelitsha.

She opened her shop in Tambo village three weeks ago. Last Thursday evening a group of men entered the shop, locked the door and killed the family. Saida was stabbed 113 times and she and her 10-year-old daughter, Asha, were allegedly repeatedly raped.

A witness who found the bodies the next morning said all four family members had been stripped and mutilated. After they were killed the bodies were piled on top of one another.

The first members of the Mohamed family came to South Africa shortly after their family home was bombed in 1992. Mohamed's sister, Qarmar Musse, and her last remaining child, Zamzam Ibrahim, have been living in a tent for the past four months, first in Soetwater camp near Cape Point and now in Blue Waters. Both Ibrahim and her mother have been severely brutalised during the eight years they have been here as asylum seekers.

"Three men came into my shop and asked me for money. I gave them everything I had. They then told me to go into my room that was behind the shop. They said: 'When we're done with you, kwerekwere, you won't stay in this country anymore -- you will run back to your own country.' Then they took turns to rape me," Ibrahim said.

She said: "We don't blame your government. I just want to lie down and never wake up because my heart is so sore. I want to die, I truly do."

Ibrahim's mother's, Qarmar Musse's, face was battered against a security gate by people who robbed her shop and attacked her in Nelspruit a year ago. The sight in one of her eyes has been impaired. "We have lost six of the original 11 members of our family in South Africa," she said.

"I'm happy home affairs has rejected our application for refugee status. People are shooting one another in the streets in Somalia, but that's better."

Ibrahim's husband was shot and killed in 2005 in Khayelitsha when his shop was robbed. Nobody was arrested for the killing.

Her younger brother, Mugtar Ibrahim, owned a shop in Johannesburg's Alexandra township and has been missing since the xenophobic attacks occurred in Gauteng.

Said Ibrahim: "Do you know why us refugees are killed here? It's because South Africans want everything easy. You're jealous people who don't want to work hard. You want everything for nothing. We are very hard-working people."

The UNHCR has offered refugees R500 per family to leave the Western Cape camps and the government is insisting that all refugee camps will be closed by mid-October.

In the past two months nine Somali shopkeepers have been killed in Queenstown and East London alone.
Acting provincial police commissioner Nomalady Dlani told the Daily Dispatch that the motive for the killings is robbery, not xenophobia.

Meanwhile, Percy Zvomuya reports that the Gauteng government permanently closed the province's refugee camps this week, setting in motion an exodus of trucks piled with chairs, beds, blankets and other household items.

An ageing Mozambican-born man, a resident in South Africa since 1965, is now partially blind after he was injured in the xenophobic attacks in May. His South African wife, who lost a foot, says now she has to lead her husband around -- even to the toilet. "I don't have anywhere to go," she said. "My house in Holomisa, on the East Rand, was burnt and all my furniture was stolen."

Gauteng government spokesperson Simon Zwane said the authorities had "no indication that the people don't want to go back".

Camp inmates accepted a R500 stipend to help them with relocation. "If you take the money, you are basically saying you want to leave," Zwane said. - M&G

Police fire rubber bullets at asylum seekers

Mothers with children on their backs tried to run for cover, but fell to the ground, hundreds of others trying to get out the line of fire ended up piled on top of each other in the street, and screaming could be heard in between shots.

This was the situation at the department of home affairs' Nyanga Refugee Reception Centre on Monday, when hundreds of asylum seekers, who up to last week could be served at Barrack Street, arrived and added to a crowd of at least 400 which overpowered security guards.

Police dispersed the crowd by firing rubber bullets.

After about 10 minutes refugees tentatively walked back into the street in which a number of shoes were strewn and started trying to find the ones they had lost.

Some had bleeding legs where rubber bullets had hit.

But Home Affairs remained confident that Monday's situation was "just a teething problem" and the same would not happen on Tuesday.

As of Monday asylum seekers previously served at the Barrack Street offices were routed to the Nyanga centre and this had resulted in a bigger than usual crowd.

When the Cape Times arrived in Nyanga on Monday hundreds of refugees were crowded around the centre and more were standing in the street. Police officers were stationed at the entrance.

When the crowd kept surging forward despite repeated warnings to move back, officers fired rubber bullets.

As refugees tried to run away, some fell which caused groups of them to pile up in the middle of the street.

Children could be seen clinging to their parents and a number of women with toddlers tied to their backs fell as they tried to get away.

A mother landed on her back on, with her child was tied on and so struggled to get up.

Asked if they were hurt, she started crying and quickly walked away hugging her screaming child.

"There is a problem. It seems like no one wants us here. Where must we go? We're coming here and doing the right thing. No one tells us what's going on," Carlos Mambosasa of Zimbabwe said.

"I wanted to apply for a passport. I'm five months pregnant and I was so scared my baby would be hurt," Shamso Duali of Somalia said.

An hour later smaller queues and crowds kept reforming and officers moved them back. They told the refugees to "go home" and come back to the centre on Tuesday.

Bishop Lavis police spokesperson November Filander said no injuries were reported and no one was arrested. He said officers would monitor the situation.

Said Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy: "All applications for asylum are now being handled in Nyanga. The offices at Barrack Street had a problem with queues because the street's very narrow.

"The crowd was bigger than usual in Nyanga and security guards were overpowered. But it should ease off," she said. - Cape Times