Operation Murambatsvina - South Africa style

Clutching her seven-month-old daughter, Zimbabwean refugee Gloria Musindo stood next to her belongings heaped in the dirt beside a bare cement slab and a pile of torn iron sheets. (from IOL)

Her backyard shack in River Park, on the outskirts of Alexandra, had just been torn down by security company officers, accompanied by Joburg metro police.

Tueday's demolition brought back saddening memories of her experience during last year's xenophobic attacks.

A year after her Alex shack was pillaged, Musindo, 33, has been one of the foreign nationals paying between R350 and R400 to rent shacks erected on RDP-house stands in River Park.

This is illegal, according to council bylaws, which prevent the erection of any structure without approval.

On Tuesday, Musindo stood with a huddle of neighbours surveying the damage to a cluster of shacks.

"This morning I just thought of the xenophobia, nothing else. Even now I'm still shaking.

"It's just the same as last year; this is just the beginning."

She said they did not even have enough time to collect their belongings.

"When they came to take down the shack, they said 'You must go back to your countries. The shacks are not allowed'," Musindo said.

"They say there's no xenophobia, but it's back again," Kedibone Sukazi said.

After their home had been demolished, Musindo and her husband were given a Joburg metro police notice telling them to demolish their shack within 48 hours.

Explaining this, metro police spokesman Wayne Minnaar said the notice - which carried their logo - could be theirs, but the notice had not been signed out by any of his officers.

"We were there as an escort to a private security company contracted by the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) to do the actual demolishing

"Our officers issued no notices, but the security company did.

"We normally give 48 hours' notice, but not after we have demolished the structure; we wait for the notice period to pass."

The ARP could not be reached for comment.

City of Joburg spokesperson Nthatise Modingoane said the backyard shacks were illegal and also against the government's plan to eradicate informal settlements.

More and more shacks are to be demolished in River Park in the coming days, which could leave hundreds of people homeless.

Xenophobic attack claims two lives

Two Somali men who ran a spaza shop in the Boland town of Darling have been killed in what community members describe as a xenophobic attack. (from IOL)

The men, Omar Josef and Hazim Amad, died in their shop in the early hours of Sunday when it caught fire - or when, the Somali community believes, a group of locals set it alight.

Police spokesperson November Filander said yesterday the cause of Sunday's fire was still unknown and the men's deaths will be investigated.

Hussein Omar, the Western Cape chairperson of the Somali Association of South Africa (Sasa), said the organisation had heard the news and had assigned someone to go to Darling and find out more about what had happened.

Cheating refugees gather little sympathy

Some xenophobia refugees in Cape Town cheated the United Nations of relief funds in 2008, according to an affidavit filed in the Cape High Court. The affidavit, by city housing director Hans Smit, forms the basis of an application for the eviction of just under 400 people from the Bluewaters safety site on the Cape Flats. (From IOL)

They are the last refugees remaining on city-owned property.

Smit said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had given financial assistance to people displaced by 2008's wave of xenophobic violence, for relocation or reintegration in the communities they left. This had been R1 500 for single people, and R3 000 for families of more than one person, paid in instalments. The payments were made to "DFNs" (displaced foreign nationals) only when they left the city-run safety camps.

"Shortly after the implementation of the scheme it was discovered that it was being abused by some DFNs who, by altering their names, fraudulently procured the payment of allowances to them repeatedly," Smit said.

"In addition, it was discovered that some DFNs were returning to live in the camps even after they had collected their relocation allowances."

When this emerged, administration of the payments was taken away from the staff of the Cape Town Refugee Centre, an NGO, and transferred to the city's camp managers.

The eviction application lists 236 refugees at Bluewaters by name, and asks for an order against them as well as anyone else living there. City spokesperson Pieter Cronje said the names listed on the order were those of the adults. Children brought the number at the site to 397.

Smit said in his affidavit that the city gave them notice in October 2008 it wanted them off the property, meant to be a holiday camp for members of the public.

About 20 000 displaced people had already been reintegrated into the communities they had been living in, but the Bluewaters group had "steadfastly refused to move".

He said that by refusing to reintegrate or relocate, they were trying to gain an unfair advantage over people on the city's housing waiting list, which had a backlog of 400 000.

Giving them houses would set a bad precedent, he said.

From the beginning of June to September 2008, the city had spent more than R120-million on catering for the displaced foreigners, Smit said.

Refugees being moved from pillar to post

The Cape High Court is expected to hear an application on Tuesday for the eviction of more than 400 xenophobia refugees from a site in Strandfontein. (From IOL)

The refugees, who are being accommodated at the Blue Waters safety site, was part of thousands of foreigners who were displaced during a spate of xenophobic violence last year.

They have refused to return to their communities and have called for repatriation to their home countries.

But the United Nations High Commission for Refugees has said it cannot repatriate refugees to war-torn countries.

The application will be brought by the City of Cape Town which said it was difficult to control crime at the site.

Hang your heads in Shame

South Africans should all hang their heads in shame for 2008's xenophobic attacks, says Mavuso Msimang, the director-general of the national Department of Home Affairs. (from IOL)

Speaking at a vigil in Cape Town on Thursday night to mark the anniversary of the attacks, Msimang admitted his department was "not a good example for service delivery", but that should never be used as an excuse to condone what had happened.

"As a nation, we should all hang our heads in shame for what happened in 2008," he said.

"Improvement of service delivery will do much to lessen the anger and paranoia." (Oh really? And allowing 8000 Zimbabweans into the country helps? Seems like pouring petrol on a fire.)

Attacks against foreign nations living in communities still occur.

On Thursday night youth groups, community organisations and individuals from Du Noon publicly apologised for their actions in 2008.

"We felt as a community, and especially the youth - because it was mostly the youth involved - we had to express our sincerest apologies and ask for forgiveness. We want to build Du Noon into a multi-racial and multicultural place where everyone is welcome," said Elizabeth Arendse, one of the area's community leaders.

Our time is up - Zim refugees

Around 300 Zimbabwean women, some with babies as young as five weeks, braved the cold, wet weather and spent Thursday night outside the city's Home Affairs offices in the hope of obtaining a document that would allow them to live and work in the country for 12 months.

But early on Friday the women were told they would not be getting any papers and were asked to go to the Nyanga Refugee Reception Centre.

Zimbawean national Puellah Dombo, who has been living in Eerste River, and her three-year-old daughter were among those sleeping in the cold on the pavement.

She said if the department communicated the situation more publicly and if they allowed bigger numbers of people inside they would not have people sleeping on the pavements outside their offices.

Like several other women, Dombo hoped to apply for a section 31,2b document enabling them to live and work in South Africa for 12 months.

On Thursday night the group of women said they "did not have a choice" and needed to sleep outside the offices to get the papers.

"We can't afford to leave here. Because when we get back in the morning there will be a longer queue, we will never get helped then," said Mary Chiko.

Chiko said that without the document she would be "lost" and preferred to sleep outside knowing she would be helped in a few hours.

Chiko explained that the department had allowed a two-week period for women to obtain the document, adding that this period expired on Friday.

"Our time is up, so we have to stay here and hope they will help us," she said.

Meanwhile steps have been taken to increase efficiency at the Nyanga Refugee Reception Centre, the department said.

Among the changes were that the staff complement had been beefed up, said department spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy.

- Cape Argus

Cape Town takes down tents as storm clouds gather

With the weather bureau predicting the Cape’s first massive winter storm this weekend, the City of Cape Town has decided to start dismantling the last remaining tents still housing about 400 displaced foreign nationals in the Blue Waters refugee-camp outside Muizenberg.

More than a year after hundreds of thousands foreign nationals were displaced in the Cape, about 400 mainly Somali and Congolese nationals -- including about 150 children -- are still in tents and have refused to integrate back into Cape townships. They want to return to their countries of origin because they fear for their lives in South Africa.

These people have been living in tents for more than a year. Last week the city of Cape Town served orders on the camp saying that they will evict people still living in Blue Waters.

With black rain clouds gathering over the Atlantic the city has put its disaster management teams on full alert. But it has also sent large numbers of Metro police to Blue Waters camp to take down remaining tents.

Pieter Cronje from the City of Cape Town could not be reached for comment on Thursday afternnon. - M&G

Hard times in South Africa

28-year-old Jonathan Nkala relives his trauma in the play "The Crossing" which was one of the highlights of last week's Harare International Festival. (from Yahoo)

Unable to find jobs after completing high school in a small mining town in Zimbabwe, friends Nkala and Jacob Banda saw their only hope in neighbouring South Africa.

Without passports and oblivious to the dangers that lay ahead, the pair left home pretending they were going to look for firewood and set off to the southern border town of Beitbridge.

But Banda failed to make it to the other side of the border. He drowned in the crocodile-infested Limpopo River. And for Nkala, life in South Africa turned out to be much more difficult than he had anticipated.

"We had no passports because we could not afford the cost of a passport as well as bus fare to the nearest city where there are passport offices," said Nkala, raised in the small mining town of Kwekwe.

He remembers his hometown fondly but said it was "so small one cannot sneeze without the entire community hearing and chorusing 'bless you'." He calls his country the Unstable State of Zimbabwe (USZ), and a place where "funerals were being postponed because there was no petrol at the gas stations.

"We both know it was dangerous and illegal, but being in Zimbabwe was dangerous," he said. While still mourning the loss of his childhood friend, Nkala landed a job as a tomato picker on a farm in South Africa's Limpopo province, earning a mere pittance.

Undeterred he set off for Cape Town through Johannesburg where he went for months knocking on one gate after another looking for a job while in the evening he slept rough outside a park.

There he would often see residents walking their dogs. In his wretched circumstances he even wished he was one of the well-kept dogs with their shiny healthy coats.... And now he relives his experience on a daily basis in his play.

Happy Anniversiary

According to Tlai Tali 150 people have been charged, 151 people are still on the court role with 82 cases being investigated with regard to the Xenophobic barbaric acts.

Assault, rape, murder - these are the crimes

Nothing made mention of bringing the perpetrators to book - those already identified as having instigated these attacks ...

Tlai Tlai - I can't believe a word you say anymore! ja hey minutes later he says that there are 82 cases that have been with drawn because the NPA could not prove anything...

The same 82 cases you are investigating - you've already dropped?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

"Foreigners in South Africa face continued threats of xenophobic violence"

A year on from a two-week orgy of xenophobic violence in South Africa that killed 62 people and left thousands homeless, foreigners are still at risk of attack because the root causes have not been addressed, experts said on Monday. (from IOL)

"Foreigners in South Africa face continued threats of xenophobic violence," says the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa - a network of civil society groups working with refugees.

"Little has been done by authorities to address the root causes of the violence," the consortium found, noting that vigilantism was still common, often under the guise of "fighting crime".

The group cited an attack by a mob in January on a high-rise apartment in Durban housing foreigners as evidence that xenophobia was still prevalent.

In their bid to escape the mob two men jumped to their deaths and a third sustained serious injuries. They were from Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Mozambique.