Andrew Donaldson lays bare the anger, frustration and ironies of chaotic life in Cape Town’s largest makeshift refugee camp for victims of xenophobia.
From Kommetjie, the road to Scarborough hugs the southern Peninsula mountain range. From up here, the refugee camp at Soetwater, a seaside holiday camp, looks like a funfair, a carnival of sorts. Candy-striped tents and marquees nestle at the foot of the Slangkop lighthouse. In the distance, surfers straddle their boards in the Atlantic while the sun sets in a coral sky.
This, at least, was the idyll on Monday afternoon. There was no indication of the violence or hatred that has brought some 3500 people to this place.
In fact, when I returned on Wednesday and entered Soetwater, the largest of the official “safety sites” set up by the City of Cape Town, I was surprised by the reggae blasting from a sound system in the middle of the camp, as if the place was gearing up for a party.
The council had wanted the sound system, a public address set-up for the camp; the music a request from a group of Somalis and Bob Marley was singing, “There’s a natural mystic blowing through the air. . .”
It wasn’t the only thing in the air. The Somalis — easily the most vocal of the nationalities here — pour on the invective, and do so unbidden.
This is what Abdul Jama, 32, father of two, told me: “I left Mogadishu in 2005 to open a shop in Orange Farm. In Johannesburg. They shoot my partner. They kill him. Then I come to Khayelitsha. They chase me here. South African government does nothing. F*** government. F*** South Africa. Government say sorry? F*** sorry. Only two things. We go home. Or we go other country. America. Or Australia. South Africa? F*** it. Now is finished here. We’re not stay here. F*** South African people. Xhosa people, they see us work, they see us and do nothing. They’re lazy and like to drink and sleep with women. F*** Xhosa. They steal from us, they kill us.”
Jama, whose voice had risen considerably during his outburst, pointed to a youth next to him.
“See this boy? He have family. He works to send money home. He has mother in Somalia. When he gets killed, what happens to his mother? Who gives her money?”
The boy, in his late teens, nodded. “F*** South Africa,” he said.
Also in the air was a change in the wind. Rain was coming. The Somalis, together with displaced Zimbabweans, Congolese, Ugandans and Angolans, would be spending the night — and, indeed, most of the week — in a freezing deluge.
Come Thursday morning, volunteers who’d been helping out here all week would learn that the camp’s hastily-erected tents were totally unsuitable when it came to dealing with the Cape winter.
So was some of the donated clothing. In a marquee that served as a distribution point for food and donated clothing, a volunteer held up a pair of battered high-heeled shoes. “You can see why some people are giving this stuff away,” she said. “God! Look at these pants! These skinny Somalis, you could fit one in each leg!”
I asked her why she was there. “I have to be here,” she replied. “It’s just not right what has happened to these people. What else can I do?” It was an answer I heard quite often this week.
Another volunteer, Sue Payne, from Fish Hoek, told of how she had arrived at Soetwater last Sunday, unaware of exactly how she could help, and wound up organising piles of clothing. “I just started doing things,” she said. “And I’m still here.”
Clothing distribution was chaotic. The men — with Abdul Jama right at the front — ignored the volunteers who shouted at them: “Please, get in line! Stop just grabbing things!”
Payne and her helpers — who included her daughter — had envisaged giving each refugee four items of clothing: trousers, warm jacket or coat, a jersey and a shirt. But the men, especially Jama, were having none of that. Jama launched himself at the piles on the tables. “Please, you, out!” a volunteer shouted at him. “I can’t give you anymore. You’ve got so much already!”
I don’t know how he did this, but when he was eventually led out the tent, Jama was wearing three jackets and two pairs of trousers. His son, in his arms, had on several layers of clothing, and he was dragging a black garbage bag full of more clothing.
One man screamed: “Shoes, I want shoes! Where are the shoes?” There were none left. Another held up a lambswool cardigan. “I don’t want this,” he said, throwing it down.
Several others threw back the clothing they were offered as well, and word spread to the queue outside that most of the good stuff would be gone by the time they got inside. The jostling and shoving started.
Then the Somalis started selling the clothing. Later, in the afternoon, there would be the surreal sight of neckties discarded on pathways. Who donates an old paisley tie in response to an emergency appeal for clothing?
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Payne said afterwards. “What we should do, is make up parcels and hand them out at the gates of the camp.”
Later, she would point out that, largely through trial and error, a system of sorts had evolved at Soetwater, with volunteers dealing directly with refugee leaders.
Before that, however, I called her home, and was told by her daughter that she was still at the camp. “If you get hold of her,” she laughed, “could you ask my Mom to stop at the shop because we need food here, too. There’s nothing to eat.”
Other volunteers, like registered nurse Jo Peare, would leave Soetwater in the evenings and bash out emails to their friends in an attempt to make sense of their experiences in camp.
Peare was particularly upset by what she saw on Thursday morning, after a night of heavy rain.
“I was horrified to find a tent full of Zimbabweans where the men were still sleeping on cardboard, on the bare ground,” she wrote.
“The rain pours in. The cardboard that they were using as their beds was sodden. There was a man shaking out all the blankets, as he said they were infested with insects and they were being bitten at night. As I walked around the tent I saw Bibles and booklets of prayers, lying on the ground beside blankets, and an old microwave someone had obviously taken with them as they fled.”
Peare took a photograph of a quote from the Bible which had been taped to a bag of meagre belongings. It read: “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried out to my God. He heard my voice from his temple, and my cry entered His ears.”
Peare wrote: “For the first time this week I thought that if I started to cry I might not be able to stop, and then felt guilty for allowing myself the indulgence of those feelings when I am not the one who has suffered. These people have already suffered too much in their home country.
“I met a young man named Lloyd, who used to be a teacher in Zimbabwe; he has been working as a gardener in Cape Town. He asked me if the government were going to build them houses here — on the site of the camp. He was so full of hope. It was so difficult to tell him, that there would be no houses for them, and that he has two choices — go back to their country or stay in Cape Town. He was terrified at the thought of going back to a township …
“I have not yet met a refugee who is happy to stay in Cape Town, except the ones from Masiphumelele [near Fish Hoek]. They want to get out — go somewhere, not back to their war-torn or poverty-stricken countries, but somewhere, anywhere.
“Sadly for them South Africa was the end of the line. The one hope left. One man asked me today where should he go to get a boat to Australia. Some people believe they will be resettled in Canada.”
When I spoke to her, Peare said, “They don’t seem to have a sense that there is nowhere left for them to go. I tell them that I am a foreigner too, that I’m from Ireland and have been here for five years. They just say, ‘I hope that you have more luck than we do’.”
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The Times
