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The Western Cape provincial government on Thursday shrugged off accusations that it had failed to offer adequate support to foreigners displaced by xenophobic attacks.
The government had done everything it could to make life easier for displaced foreigners living in the more 40 camps across the city, head of provincial disaster management Hildegarde Fast told journalists.
"Government takes the basic needs of the victims seriously, bearing in mind that there are logistical challenges," she said.
Accusations by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which had taken the government to court for failure to attend to the basic needs of the displaced, in line with the United Nations standards, were misplaced.
While the government had a duty to provide shelter, food and other basic facilities to refugees, it would be unfair to expect it perform beyond what its resources allowed.
"Norms and conditions need to be adopted to local standards," she said.
The government had provided refugees with meals, shelter and other basic facilities.
However, Fast admitted that the UN had raised concerns about aspects of the government’s response to the refugee crisis.
"We are working consistently with the UN. They have been useful in pointing various gaps… we welcome those points and are addressing them on an ongoing basis.
More than 14 000 of the 20 000 refugees that had been housed in the various shelters across the province following the outbreak of xenophobic attacks two months ago, had already been integrated back into communities.
On Tuesday the TAC launched an urgent High Court application against the provincial government as well as the City of Cape Town in an effort to improve the living conditions of the more than 4 000 refugees still living in camps.
It said the government had done nothing to improve falling standards of sanitation, health and nutrition at the camps.
Fast declined to be drawn into the TAC case, saying the provincial government needed time to formulate a comprehensive response.
The first hearing on the case was due to take place at the Cape High Court next week. - Sapa

All six shelters accommodating foreign nationals displaced by the xenophobic attacks of May will be closed within two weeks, the Gauteng provincial government said on Thursday.
"Based on the good progress made on the integration process, we are convinced that the remaining 3 000 people who are still accommodated at the shelters will use the two weeks to either return to their homes or find alternative accommodation" Social Development MEC Kgaogelo Lekoro said.
The shelters will be closed on August 15 and basic services such as water and electricity will be cut on that day.
Lekoro said it was not the intention of the government to create permanent separate settlements for foreign nationals.
"Foreign nationals have lived in South Africa for many years and through their stay here they have lived side by side with locals," he said. - Sapa

By Tanya Farber

This is not a good place for a pregnant woman, says Ayisha Husseni, a Burundian national living at the Youngsfield refugee camp in Wynberg. Five months pregnant, she is finding it difficult to manage daily life there.
Living conditions for displaced immigrants remain a concern across the Western Cape, but pregnant women and those with newborn babies are even more vulnerable than others.
Insufficient nutrition, delayed ambulance services, cold weather, lack of beds, and exposure to illness continue to plague the lives of many women who were forced to flee their homes after the xenophobia attacks in May.
"I do worry about still living here when I go into labour," says the 24-year-old Husseni.
"Right now, the child is playing nicely in my tummy, but if something went wrong, there would be nobody to help me."
She dreams of staying in South Africa and longs to have her own room, but for now her life is one lived in limbo. Returning to Burundi is not an option. She has no family left there.
"My parents, both Hutus, were killed in the war there, and everybody else fled," she says, a hand over her belly, "so I must stay here. But my husband and I both have no work. So what is going to happen when our baby is born?"
Rwandan Mariyamu Sauda, 21, faced the reality Ayisha still worries about. Her baby was ready to make her entry into the world. But when an ambulance failed to arrive at Youngsfield, Mariyamu delivered her own baby.
"My little girl was born here in the camp," she says, holding her in a roll of blankets with two eyes peeping out, "and I would have liked some help but in the end only God was here to help me deliver her."
After 90 minutes of active labour and no sign of an ambulance, she had no choice but to push her baby out in her tent.
Nifasha Richard, a Burundian national who represents the foreign nationals at Youngsfield, says another woman at the camp also recently waited hours for an ambulance to arrive fter contractions began.
Although her baby was safely delivered, they face a new set of challenges once the baby is no longer in utero.
At night, the thin mattresses and cheap blankets provide little protection from the cold. Although the tents are made of plastic, they are not waterproof as rain seeps in through the ground and the flaps of the tents, and the showers - only half of which are working - are for men and women, so there is little privacy.
But, says Mariyamu, the hardest part has been providing nutrition for her newborn.
"I haven’t had enough breast milk for my baby," she says, "and there is no supplement or formula available for her. At night she cries."
Fatuma Ally, a 21-year-old Somalian who is five months pregnant and also has other children to feed, says food has been a major source of anxiety for her.
"The same food is given every single day at the same time, but now I myself am like a small baby here. I must wait for things to be given to me. I can’t ask."
Sometimes, she manages to cook extra food for herself and her children using a small two-plate stove which she plugs into the electricity supply.
She says she knows this isn’t allowed but she can’t bear to let her children go hungry.
Despite fleeing the catastrophic problems of her native land, she says she would go back in a heartbeat now if only she could.
"I stayed in Khayelitsha before the attacks," she explains, "and I used to run a little informal shop. My children were being educated. When the attacks came, they stole everything I owned so now I am someone who has nothing, and my children aren’t being educated anymore.
Being back in that community would be useless for me. Being in this refugee camp is also not a way for me to live.
There is fighting in Somalia, but it is my home and if I had the money I would go back there tomorrow."
She says everything here is a challenge - from changing out of your clothes in privacy, to falling asleep at night, to getting medical attention.
So far she has had no check-ups for herself or the unborn child.
"Of course, I also worry about catching illness and disease here, but I have no choice. I have nowhere else to go," she says.
And, when she thinks ahead to four months time, she is filled with despair.
"I will still be living here, and my baby will arrive, and I will still have no choices for my own life," she says.
But all she can do is try deal with today, so she twirls some spaghetti around a fork and calls her children to come and eat.

• This article was originally published on page 17 of The Cape Argus on July 30, 2008

Hi Tracey, Hi Sam

As I am weathering a bit of insomnia, I am taking the opportunity to wish you courage and renewed energy. 

That was a horribly energy-sapping event today - quite revolting in the underhand dynamics that seemed to drive it.  I cannot get to sleep for (amongst other things) feeling so compromised by having to interface with a whole range of authorities (like some of those today) who whine, winge and manipulate.  Do you scream? do you cajole? do you refuse to speak to them? do you invite them to tea and tell them how much you admire them and wouldn’t they just like to do this-and-this-and-this, ever so kindly, please, and we’ll be ever so grateful for ever and ever for their largesse in taking a few steps closer to seeing ALL other people as no bigger or smaller than themselves? 

When I attend meetings like this I do not know how I can possibly write an evaluation report that has to be delivered in the polite tones of international aid-speak.  How can I write in measured language about people and institutions that mess with people’s lives and then turn off their phone at 7.00 p.m while the rest of us - mostly volunteers - sort out the shit they have created.    There is so much to say and yet it’s all pointless - it’s politics, its money, its ambition, its disaffection, its ego.  Whatever.

Today the ‘facilitators’ sadly seemed to have adopted a mantra that the refugee leadership is not representative.  It is an excuse not to act - to pretend that consultation has taken place but that it didn’t work because ‘they’ were illigitimate. 

Although I have not been involved in the processes through which the RLC has evolved, it would appear that it is as legitimate as possible in the circumstances - and probably a lot more legitimate than many similar processes in the past.  However,  I have been saying for some time (here in my little corner) that government (and civil society too sometimes) needs to take a much more dynamic and flexible approach to acknowledging leadership in the refugee community.  We are trying to partner with a large community of people of very diverse backgrounds - nationality, religion, language, culture, levels of education and so on - apart from the obvious ones of age, gender, etc.  One thing that I think is often overlooked is the class differentials.  In no other circumstances would be be expecting people with so varied resources and interests to form stable and durable coalitions into something we choose to label ‘legitimate’ and ‘representative’ structures.  Simply because we lump them into a basket (and I use that word advisedly) called ‘refugees’ we expect them to act in a manner appropriate to a Grade 10 school committee. 

We are also trying to work with people whose lives are extremely fluid - they do not have the community and geographical ties and, at some levels, the inertia that many of the South African citizens to whom ‘development’ and ’solutions’  and, for some at least, social grants are delivered.  For the foreign nationals, today they’re down and have time to go to meetings - tomorrow they’re busy with a plan for creating a business.  Today they’re living in Salt River, tomorrow they’re living in Kraaifontein.  Today they’re working nights as a security guard and can make meetings outside work provided they can get some sleep during the day, but tomorrow they’ve been transferred to Stellenbosch and havn’t got a chance in hell in getting here other than once a month if we hold a meeting on a Sunday. 

Grrrrrrrrrr!  Well, I hope you are at least sleeping better than I am tonight. 

Take care of yourselves and focus on the many, many people who have great appreciation for and knowledge of how much you have done for the people with whom you are working.  I doubt that there would be as effective an RLC if it were not for yourselves.  I have no doubt that, aside from the perceived belligerence of the IDP community at Soetwater, the mere fact that there is an organised committee there is part of the Province’s antipathy to the residents of that site and, inevitably, yourselves as their allies. 

Keep up the good work.

With love,

Vicki

30/07/2008 20:05  - (SA)  

Cape Town - Government inaction in the face of deteriorating living conditions in camps for displaced foreign nationals has forced refugees to take legal steps against the state, the Treatment Action Campaign said on Wednesday.

Briefing the media in Cape Town, former TAC chair Zackie Achmat said Tuesday’s Cape High Court application by the organisation, together with a number of refugees, came after the Western Cape provincial government as well as the City of Cape Town had ignored numerous appeals to assist refugees.

"I have never seen so much dithering in government - the government has a duty to ensure that equal Constitutional standards are upheld," he said.

It was unacceptable for the government to fold its arms when people were living in such appalling condition without running water and other basic facilities.

Humanitarian crisis

Achmat said although the TAC was an organisation focusing on issues of HIV/Aids, it had no option but to intervene given that the situation at the camps amounted to a humanitarian crisis.

"We do not do this easily - we really would prefer the government to fulfil its constitutional obligation in terms of displaced people," he said.

Quoting from a recent report by the United Nations on the living conditions of displaced foreign nationals in the country, Achmat said the South African government had failed to give refugees enough information on how exactly it was intending to address their problems.

"The current lack of communication from the government to Internally Displaced People (IDPs) is causing severe psychological distress and will likely hinder reintegration or other durable solution," he said.

The first court hearing on the matter is scheduled to take place on Tuesday.

From: Gordon Denoon <gordon.ocha@gmail.com>

July 2008

Executive Summary of Findings

Tuesday, 29 July 2008

From the findings of the assessment it is clear that the City and Provincial authorities have spent a great deal of time, effort and resources on the provision of services to safe sites for the IDPs dislocated by xenophobic violence in Cape Town in May of 2008. However due to the fact that the current protracted displacement situation presents the government authorities with a crisis situation that goes beyond their recent experience there are a number of areas which could be strengthened. It is the opinion of the assessment team that it is possible for the government to address the most urgent and important findings with a minimum of additional expenditure and effort and thereby improve safety and the living conditions of IDPs.

The following is a summary of the most urgent and important findings of the assessment along with recommendations on how they can best be addressed. These recommendations are offered as constructive suggestions and not as criticism of the current state.

1. Communications

The current lack of communication from the government to IDPs is causing severe psychological distress and will likely hinder reintegration or other durable solutions. This also serves to increase distrust of the IDP community within the government.

Communication between IDPs and the government must be regular and include relevant line ministries. Site visits composed of key stakeholders should regularly visit the camps to meet with IDPs and share information. For this to work the government will need to commit adequate time and be prepared to listen to concerns and answer questions in addition to providing information to the IDP groups.

2. Security

Access control is not systematic in all sites. It needs to be improved in line with JOC recommendations. In order to improve access control it is recommended that training for security staff in expected standards be given, and additional monitoring and spot checks be commenced.

3. Shelter

Current shelter in tents in all sites is inadequate and below minimum standards for privacy, dignity, protection and safety issues. It is recommended that the government remove large tents and provide family sized tents.

Accommodation in community halls is inadequate and below minimum standards regarding privacy, dignity, protection issues and health issues. It is recommended that alternative suitable accommodation be found in consultation with IDPs.

4. NFI – (Non-Food Items)

Currently in several sites a number of IDPs do not have mattresses or blankets, given the current weather in Western Cape these should be provided as needed to IDPs who have not received these essential items (eg Harmony Park urgently needs 430 mattresses) as soon as possible.

Currently NFIs are provided on an ad-hoc basis and there appears to be little record keeping in this area. It is recommended that the government develop and implement a system for recording donations and supplies to develop a complete picture of current stocks, gaps and future requirements in this area in consultation with NGOs and FBOs.

5. Food and Nutrition

Food is a problematic area in all sites. The nutritional value should be assessed and the quality and quantity of food monitored. It should be ensured that vulnerable groups have access to sufficient and nutritious food. Greater participation from IDPs should be encouraged.

6. Education

In all sites there are children not attending school, given that school has restarted after the holiday break, it is urgent to provide access to education. In several sites IDPs indicated that they do not wish to have their children leave the sites, if possible schooling could be provided within the camps.

7. Protection

The return and reintegration process needs to be addressed within a reintegration strategy set by the authorities. Assessment of areas of return needs to be done prior to the return of the IDPs. The remaining IDPs in the sites are those who lost part or all belongings and then need to receive a reintegration package from the government or the civil society.

While very few cases of perpetrated or attempted sexual violence, sexual exploitation and domestic violence have been reported, this should not be taken to mean that these issues are not a problem. In situations of displacement, sexual violence, exploitation and abuse is common, and the few reported cases are an indicator of a larger problem. It is also important to note that there are no reporting mechanisms in place to facilitate reporting and for women in particular there is very little trust of service providers within sites and among health and security personnel in general.

8. Water and Sanitation

In all sites water supply exceeded minimum requirements, however in some sites access to hot water for bathing was limited. In all sites sanitation was adequate, however in some site this needs to be improved with participation from IDPs.

Toilet/bathing facilities in all sites pose serious protection concerns for women and girls. These facilities should be sex-disaggregated, and clearly marked for men and women/children. In all sites these facilities should be securable from the inside, and the security of these facilities should be monitored on an on-going basis (day and night) by both male and female security personnel.

—– Original Message —–

From: Sam Pearce

Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 1:07 PM

Following the death of Somalian Noor Ali, aged 27, shot in the head last night in Grabouw location, about 80 refugees are at this moment demonstrating at the main gate of the Soetwater safety camp in protest at continuing xenophobic violence in townships and the government’s continuing denial of the problem.

Noor Ali had been 7 years in SA, 4 years in Grabouw and was father to 2 small children.

For more information, call Somali Soetwater leaders:

Asad Abdullahi 073 461 8201 - currently at the funeral

Saddiq Hussein 076 560 9638 - at Soetwater main gate

NEW UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF SPEAKS OF PERSONAL UNDERSTANDING OF DISCRIMINATION
29/7/2008- The newly appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says she comes to her work with a personal understanding of human rights violations, based on her experience of living in South Africa during the apartheid regime when non-whites such as herself suffered from institutionalized discrimination. “I think I come with a real understanding of what it’s like to have your human rights violated and to have it violated for a very long time without any justice in sight, and the apartheid struggle taught that,” Navanethem Pillay said today in an interview with UN Radio. Ms. Pillay, who is due to take up her post in Geneva on 1 September, said that leadership in her home country had been critical in bringing about dramatic change for the better. She went on to cite the establishment of the Human Rights Council, where she said Member States now subscribe to the notion of accountability, monitoring and peer reviews, as an example of dramatic change that had taken place globally in the human rights field. Noting that her predecessor Louise Arbour had established human rights offices in 50 countries, Ms. Pillay said she wanted to take that work forward. “I see these as progressive trends which would advance the work of the High Commissioner in protecting human rights everywhere.”
She said that nations now took human rights with the seriousness that they deserved, drawing on her experience of serving as a Judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2003, and before that as both Judge and President on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which she joined in 1995. “My experience as an international judge is where political leadership has been brought to account for complicity in some very grave international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. I was on the panel of judges that sentenced the Prime Minister of Rwanda to life imprisonment for the offense of genocide,” she noted. “I subscribe to this new system of international criminal justice system which we have only very recently, for the past fifteen years, as a strong signal that impunity will be ended and that anyone, whether a head of state or a militia leader, will be held accountable and punished.” The High Commissioner acknowledged that she would have to operate in a different manner in her new post from her previous work for criminal tribunals, even though she said there were close links between the two activities. “The criminal trials have the power to punish, the High Commissioner has to find various approaches of persuasion, of strong talk, or to develop civil society organizations to meet this source of the violations,” she said.
© UN News service http://www.un.org/News/

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/davidsmith/2008/07/28/a-good-woman-in-the-congo/

I was thinking about xenophobia today. In fact, these days I think about it far too often. The death of a friend in Kinshasa prompts today’s thoughts.

Nathalie Muteba was a young and extremely gifted journalist at Radio Okapi, a national radio network covering the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Friday Nathalie died suddenly of a heart attack; she was nine months pregnant. It’s almost certain that Nathalie would be alive today if she had had access to the sort of health care that is available in Johannesburg hospitals and clinics. Had Nathalie not been employed by Radio Okapi, there’s a good chance she would have been living in South Africa, as so many of her educated peers are because of the almost hopeless job situation at home.

The same day Nathalie died, Radio Okapi ran a story about the troubles in South Africa’s refugee camps. The story explained, through an interview with on official from a Pretoria-based, non governmental organisation helping the refugees, why there has been so much reluctance to sign up for new temporary documents from Home Affairs. The reluctance is two fold: most of the Congolese in the camps hold two-year residence permits. They aren’t in the refugee camps because of problems with paperwork; they are in the camps because they are afraid. They are afraid of returning to the South African communities that turned violently against them because they are foreigners. And they fear that the new documents Home Affairs wants them to sign for, valid for only six months, will force them to relive some of the horrors they have recently escaped while at the same time removing some of the rights they have with their existing residence permits.

These fears are not difficult to understand. Interviews in the media with thugs boasting about nightly attacks on foreigners, as appeared in this week’s Sunday Times don’t help to put already nervous people at ease. It’s not just the Congolese who have these fears; the story is the same with all the refugees living in South Africa, whether they are Congolese, Mozambican, Zimbabwean, or anybody else.

It’s sad to say but refugees from Darfur get better treatment in camps in the Chadian desert than Africans who have been the victims of xenophobic attacks in South Africa do. In Chad, neither the United Nation’s refugee agency nor the Chadian government is threatening to close the camps before the security situation in Darfur has stabilised. Handicapped as it is, the international community is at least trying to find a peaceful solution to that crisis.

While South Africa is certainly not Darfur, fear is fear, and for this fear to be overcome, the people of the camps need some kind of assurance that their concerns are being addressed, and not just through words, but through concrete actions.

That brings me back to Nathalie Muteba. Nathalie was part of a team of journalists at Sun City in 2002 during the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, a process lasting several months that brought various belligerent parties in the war in the DRC to the negotiating table, It was a period of hope; a period when Congolese thought that perhaps their country, a country so often prefaced with the word potential, might be on the threshold of a period of peace and prosperity; a period during which accountants and doctors and teachers would not have to consider helping South Africans find parking spots at Eastgate.
That dreamed-of period has not arrived. War lords continue to sow terror in the east, the president of the republic appears out of his depth for dealing with the problems of a country where the word kleptocracy was coined, and the politician most popular in the capital city is in jail in The Hague, answering to charges of war crimes he allegedly committed in a neighbouring country.

South Africa’s refugee problem is not going to go away. It’s time to find a way to make them feel at home, so that they can contribute to nation building here. However they can only contribute effectively if they are made to feel welcome.

Meanwhile, back in the Congo, I would like to believe that, despite her untimely death, Nathalie Muteba did not die in vain. She and many others have been working towards the creation of a country where the best and the brightest don’t have to leave home and be treated as second-class citizens in a foreign land.

Rest in Peace Nathalie.

Yazeed Kamaldien

Published:Jul 28, 2008

Foreigners returning to Cape Town townships attacked

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=810191

Renewed violence greeted foreigners who returned to Cape Town townships this weekend, but provincial government officials have claimed reintegration is a "success".

Two Somali traders were attacked and robbed by a gang, and a family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo said they lived in fear after finding a bullet in their house — all less than a month after returning to their homes in the wake of the xenophobic violence that drove them into refugee camps.

Early on Saturday, a gang of 12 men attacked Abdulahi Muhammad Sheikh, of Somalia, and a friend at their shop in Khayelitsha township. They fled from Khayelitsha two months ago, when violent attacks against foreigners around the country claimed 62 lives and displaced thousands in the Western Cape and Gauteng.

The Times interviewed them in Mitchell’s Plain yesterday where they are seeking refuge.

Sheikh, whose head and face were bandaged, said they were beaten with the butts of guns and pieces of iron wielded by the gang.

"They were my customers. After they beat us, they fought among themselves over whether to kill us. They told us that this is not Somalia," Sheikh said.

"They took our cellphones, a fridge and all our groceries and airtime that we were selling. They also took all our money. This happened in 2006 and this is the second time this year that we are attacked."

Sheikh said they had returned to the township because "the [South African] government tells us to reintegrate".

More tales of violence against foreigners emerged at the Soetwater refugee camp yesterday.

Agnes Omari, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, showed The Times a bullet that her son found after their house was attacked in Philippi. He returned to the township with his father to "see if it was safe".

Omari and her family fled Philippi when her neighbours beat her up. Her eyes still have blue marks under them. Omari, who lives with her husband and five children at Soetwater, said it felt "like a game now. I just want my children to go to school. This government doesn’t want to help the people".

At least 4700 foreigners still live in camps and at mosques, churches and community halls across Cape Town. Hildegard Fast, the head of the provincial disaster management team, said the Western Cape government planned to move refugees from the sites to two new camps.

She said the new locations had not been identified but foreigners would have to be reintegrated or moved by the end of August.

Fast said 75percent of the 19000 foreigners originally displaced had been reintegrated.

"We have over 80 facilitators working on reintegration … we measure our success by the number of people who are leaving [the camps]."

She said they were also in contact with the police "to track violence against foreigners".

"In some cases you find violence between foreigners and also explicitly linked to crime. But it is difficult to say which of the incidents are exclusively xenophobic."