July 2008 seems like a long time ago. I’d just landed back in South Africa off the back of disturbing images appearing all over the news. Townships were ablaze and refugee camps were springing all over the country as the local population rose up against the foreign national community in what has become known as The Xenophobia Riots. I visited a couple of the camps and met some of the locals, before bidding my farewells and leaving for the coast and 18 months worth of traveling. I never expected to return to the camps as I expected the situation to right itself in due course.
So today there is a grim sense of déjà vu as I pick my way through the sand drifts on a lonely road somewhere between the sprawling townships of the Cape Flats and the endless beachfront of False Bay. I am alone and feel slightly apprehensive, as I am not sure what lies at the end of the path. It’s hot too: boiling hot. I drive in just a pair of shorts and feel more than a little conspicuous. A wrong turn has already taken me into a rutted dead where I had struggled to escape the clutches of the deep dirt and sand, the screeching engine drawing a couple of bedraggled onlookers from the surrounding shacks.
I am headed to the Bluewater camp. It the area that the Somalis I visited in July 2008 were moved along to, having previously sheltered in the lee of the Slangkop lighthouse towards the oceanside hamlet of Kommetjie. Of the three thousand or so I visited then, six hundred still remain. I recognise the tents as I pull up towards the wire gate. There’s nobody around but as I lean on the gate and it creaks slightly ajar, a man springs to and asks me my business. It’s eerily quiet and the exchange draws interest from tents close by.
“Where is your pass?”
“I have no pass,” I reply, patting my pockets.
“You must go.”
But I’m in no mood to leave so I press him for some answers. Who brings food? Is the government helping? What’s going to happen? The government were thwarted on numerous occasions in 2009 when attempting to evict the remaining refugees. Are they still pursuing this? But he offers nothing.
“Do you think this is fair?” is my last question.
“No,” is the response I get.
So I trudge back to my car, along the doubled-up wire fence perimeter and in doing so, I catch the eye of a couple of men idling by their white UN-embossed tent. I smile and they smile back. They come over and we chat a while. Their names are Hassan and Ali and they come from Tanzania. Ali speaks little English so I talk mostly to Hassan, who speaks it fluently.
Their story is similar to those I heard back in 2008. They both ran small businesses that were looted and burned in the riots. They fled the townships and fear to return. They can’t return home to Tanzania for differing reasons. Hassan’s father was killed and their family home burned down for his father’s political allegiances. Death surely awaits if he returns. Ali remains silent all the while, shaking his head softly. The UN came, took their details, their phone numbers and left. They’ve heard nothing since. They receive food now and again from local NGOs but the Metro police have taken to blocking food parcels in an attempt to drive the refugees away. There is no running water, no power despite the power lines that hang mockingly overhead and no sanitation. One NGO worker I met later in town told me how many survive on the rats that inhabit the nearby dunes. They are cooked over the fires, the only source of energy in this almost primeval camp.
“People didn’t even live like this 2,000 years ago,” says Hassan.
Hassan tells me he is free to leave if he wants but recounts how the last time he went to Khayaleitsha, the nearest township, he was singled out immediately as a kwri-kwri(foreigner) and robbed. He went to the police station but the officer on charge waved him away as he tried to give his statement. If he has rights, it seems the government has long since written them off.
“Only God can punish us”, he says. “But the government wants to play God.”
Time passes by slowly here but life goes on regardless. There have been several births in Bluewater but medical aid is short in coming. Newborn babies have been delivered in the dust whilst sick and ailing patients are afforded little quarter, instead ushered to the city healthcare clinics, which are all but out of reach.
“It’s a miracle, there have been no deaths here, people here bounce,” Hassan says with a melancholy smile.
As before, conversation dwindles and I bid my farewells, exchanging a bit of airtime with Hassan so he can call friends on the ‘outside’. As I drive home, I am humbled by the circumstances these people face. I’m also shocked that the government seeks to wash their hands of the situation through sheer neglect. I think where I was in July 2008 and just how long they’ve been here. More than anything, I feel helpless to make any inroads as it’s being made all but impossible in an attempt to force the last remaining families out, bar telling their story. So here it is.
When I last visited the camps in 2008, there seemed little hope. The refugees were stuck in an impasse between a government unwilling to repatriate and a UN unable to operate. Again it seems so. True, many others have been reintegrated to the townships but personal experience of those that I see day-to-day in my township workplace say they are still harassed, still not welcomed and barely tolerated. Simply kwri-kwri.
It’s an embarrassment for a city expectant of the World Cup in just a few short months, and it will be interesting to see what happens. If evicted, Hassan says he will take to the streets, he’ll never return to the townships. What the hordes of tourists will make of it all, who knows. As to whether they will even know about it, again, is anyone’s guess.
But this is Africa and everyone here has a story. So if you’re coming down here in June, come with an open mind, an open heart and maybe you can make a difference.
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