Cape Town will be filing an application in court before the end of the week for an eviction order for the remaining refugees at the Blue Waters safety camp near Strandfontein.
Pieter Cronjé, spokesperson for the City of Cape Town, said there were 396 refugees at Blue Waters and 64 at the Youngsfield military base, even though the camps had been closed.
He said that while the city, the province and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were still assisting people with either relocation or re-integration, many of the remaining refugees had refused all offers. So far the cost to the city had been R120-million. To date they had only recovered R17m from national government Cronjé said .
Cronjé said they would not use force, but would rather allow the legal process to take its course.
He said that once the application had been filed with the Cape High Court, the sheriff would advise the refugees, who would then have 10 weekdays - days in which the court was in session - in which to indicate whether they wanted to defend the action or not.
"If they do want to defend it, they will have 15 working days in which to file their affidavit and the city, as the applicant, would be given 10 days to file an answering one."
The registrar would then set a date for the court to hear the matter.
Cronjé said the eviction would only apply to Blue Waters because it was municipal property. The SANDF would need to take legal action on the Youngsfield refugee camp.
But Braam Hanekom of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop) had appealed to the city not to evict the refugees until after the elections in the interests of stability in the Western Cape.
- Cape Argus
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