Refugee: I’m afraid

Barely two days after returning to Stofland from where she and about 3 000 other Zimbabweans were forced out by angry South Africans just over a year ago, 23-year-old farmworker Lister Gondo said she had been threatened.

A drunk man stopped her on her way from church on Sunday and told her she must go back to Zimbabwe.

“The municipality gave you R2 000 but you are coming here. Why don’t you go to Zimbabwe?” the man asked.

Added Gondo: “I was afraid of this drunk man.”

She returned to Stofland in her employer’s car and escorted by a police van on Friday night, watched by a crowd of local people.

Doing her laundry outside her rented house, watched by her landlord, her four-year-old daughter and a friend, Gondo appeared content.

“I don’t get afraid indoors, but when I have to walk around I’m afraid,” she said.

She planned to stay in the house until next year.

Several houses in the area were empty because owners were afraid to rent them out to Zimbabweans, said Gondo.

Since the return of a number of Zimbabweans to Stofland and Ekuphumleni in recent days, tension has again apparently risen in the informal settlements, prompting regular police patrols.

Residents said the Zimbabweans were taking a risk by coming back into their area.

“The community is not happy that (the Zimbabweans) are coming back. They are taking a big risk,” said a local who asked not to be named. She said the locals still had a “grudge” against the refugees.

However, De Doorns community leader Jerry Kolase said they were urging the locals to stay calm and not get violent. Emphasising that most residents were “totally against” reintegration of the Zimbabweans, Kolase cautioned his community, saying “fighting won’t help us resolve things”. He said community leaders would call a public meeting to discuss the developments and their pending service delivery grievances.

The Zimbabweans’ return came after the De Doorns refugee camp they had been sheltered in since the xenophobic attacks in November, 2009 was shut down yesterday.

The camp had been set up at the local rugby grounds by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Breede Valley municipality after Stofland and Ekuphumleni residents drove out 3 000 foreign nationals, mostly Zimbabweans, they accused of stealing their jobs in the farming town near Worcester.

Zimbabwean workers’ homes were demolished in the forced evictions, resulting in more than 20 local residents being arrested and charged with public violence.

However, charges against some were later dropped, leaving 12 facing charges.

Yesterday was the deadline for camp dwellers to vacate the camp and as the Cape Times arrived, all that was left was refuse and municipal workers doing the last bits of cleaning.

Government officials had battled for months to reach an agreement with the locals to allow the refugees back, but to no avail.

A breakthrough was finally made by a mediator, leading to most voluntarily vacating the camp and receiving a R1 200 settlement gratuity and free transport to Zimbabwe.

Braam Hanekom, leader of refugee rights’ organisation Passop, said he believed the communities could be united.

While many of the estimated 400 who were left in the camp at the time of the agreement were reported to have headed back home, some accepted job offers from farmers until the end of the grape farming season early next year

The rest took the risk of returning to the place they were driven out of.

- Cape Times

Mbeki calls for probe into attacks

Former president Thabo Mbeki remains convinced that the 2008 violent attacks against foreigners were not motivated by xenophobia.

'If hatred of others who are different were the reason, whites would have been the targets'

If they were, he said, the majority of the victims of the attacks would have been white.

In an interview with the Sunday Times following the launch of his Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute this week, the former president said South Africa still owed the world an explanation as to what had caused the 2008 violence.

"These things took place, people were killed and all sorts of terrible things happened. And the thing surely must be stopped because it is wrong and it is bad and we have to pursue it.

"But in order to stop these kinds of attacks, we have got to understand them properly ...

"And if people just make a declaration that South Africans are xenophobic, that will lead to particular kinds of action which, I am certain, would not produce the kind of results we are looking for. Xenophobia is fear and the hatred of others who are different," Mbeki said.

And if the hatred of "others who are different" were the reason for the attack, white people would have been the obvious targets.

"When I walk down the streets of Johannesburg and this other black person approaches me, there is no way (of) my telling that they are Zimbabwean or Mozambican. There is nothing there that says 'ah, this is the enemy I must hate.'

"But if a white person comes up, they are so different.

"So I am saying that if there was xenophobia, I would expect it to be expressed against people who might stand out as being different from me and also, given our history, these are the people that oppressed us. But you don't have any evidence of racism among our people," Mbeki said.

The "root cause" of the violence that left more than 60 people dead and scores of others homeless, still needs to be investigated and accurately reported, he said.

Mbeki said preventative measures should be put in place to avoid a flare-up of such attacks in the future. But to do so, a proper diagnosis was needed in order to establish what had happened in those communities to provoke the violence.

He said because Africans on the continent had been "shocked" by the killings of foreigners in the country, an objective account from the South African government would ease the concern of our counterparts elsewhere in the world.

"I am quite sure when the continent gets this report, which will be an objective report, they would breathe a sigh of relief because there is a close attachment," Mbeki said.

"But so long as the message to the rest of the continent that these attacks took place as a manifestation of xenophobia - that message came from us. It is us who said that. But why did we say it?"

He said South Africans had a "strong sense of solidarity" with other African countries as they supported the struggle against apartheid. And to continue on this path of solidarity, South Africa needs to prove that the attacks that took place were not motivated by hate for foreigners by the locals.

"Let us get to the root causes (of) this thing and communicate it to the rest of the continent, which I am certain ... would confirm the statement that our people are not in the grip of xenophobia," Mbeki said.

- Timeslive

Gigaba: Home affairs can handle Zim permits

The department of home affairs has the resources to process special amnesty permits for undocumented Zimbabwean migrants, deputy minister Malusi Gigaba said on Wednesday.

"We have more than the necessary resources to ensure that the project is completed by its deadline," Gigaba said in Pretoria.

The department had employed 354 employees nationally to administer the amnesty project and had put measures in place to increase capacity based on demand.

Due to the particularly high volume of applicants at the Johannesburg regional office, the department was re-opening an office in Market street to relieve congestion.

Gigaba said the department had weekly meetings with various Zimbabwean stakeholders to assess the status of the project, to unlock bottlenecks where necessary and to ensure that the December 31 deadline would be met.

Home affairs recently announced an amnesty for Zimbabweans who had been using fraudulent South African identity books, on condition that they hand these in at the department's regional offices before December 31.

Some human rights groups had said the deadline should be extended as the department was unable to cope with the large number of applications.

-- Sapa.