Life after the World Cup

Well, the World Cup has ended, but a whole new sort of craziness has come up here in Cape town.

I'm not sure if this has made news anywhere else, but there have been threats about a new wave of xenophobic violence hitting the country immediately following the World Cup surfacing for months. The tournament ended on Sunday, and it seems as though some scary things are already happening.

In my staff meeting yesterday, we discussed the sporadic escalation of these incidents. Allegedly, 2 Somali shopkeepers have already been killed. A Zimbabwean man was apparently thrown off of a train. In Kraaifontein (an area of Cape Town), there is a story going around that the deaths of a local man and refugee man last week were the result of a xenophobic incident. In Philippi on Sunday, two women (one with a small baby) were greeted outside their home by a group of three men threatening to attack them. Their landlord intervened, and prevented the attack by assuring the men that the women would leave the area. The women were forced to leave all of their possessions behind and seek shelter in another part of the city. The police arrived when this was happening, and instead of arresting the men or taking the statements of the women and the other witnesses, they simply drove the women to the train station and suggested they go somewhere safer.

The scariest part about this is that almost all of the people I work with are refugees. The first thing we discussed in our meeting was whether those in our office are feeling safe in their homes. Even the South Africans at my work said they have been threatened for helping refugees. One coworker in our meeting (from Congo) said "To ask if I am safe is a difficult question. Today, I feel safe. But tomorrow? I can never know."

Sonke and some of our partners have started a new campaign to try to make a stand against these attacks. It is called 1 Africa. It seems as though everything else is being put on the backburner to take this forward as quickly as possible. We are having four marches in different parts of Cape Town in the next week and have partnered with several other organizations to raise awareness and hopefully help to prevent that kind of situation that occurred in 2008.

One of the most interesting parts about this is that these threats have been surfacing for months, yet the first meeting I sat in on discussing it with other organizations was about two weeks ago. The entire campaign that we are doing now only came to life yesterday, in a meeting that started at one in the afternoon. I'm amazed at how quickly it is coming together, but at the same time, I have to wonder why it took everyone so long to act. There was so much talk of this happening that I don't understand why planning didn't take place weeks, even months, ago to get this started. This is one of the reasons that I am afraid that NGO work may not be for me. A lot of the time, it just seems incredibly disorganized and ineffecient. Why wait until something happens? MAKE A PLAN, PEOPLE.

Just had to get that out. :)

Here's one of the more interesting emails I have received on the subject today:

Dear all,

As of 12am Tuesday, approximately 15 xenophobia-related attacks in Khayelitsha have been reported to the SJC. These have all occurred since the 11th of July 2010. The majority of these attacks have comprised gangs looting Somalian shops, which has occurred in a variety of locations including Kuyasa, R and L Sections, TR, TQ & QQ Sections, M, BM & V Sections, Makhaza 33 Section and SST Section in Town 2. There have also been reports of threats to and attacks on the property of Zimbabwean and Malawian citizens.

The police were notified in all of the incidents, and seem to have consistently responded quickly. While they seem to have been effective at dispersing the looters, in the incidents we monitored this was generally not followed with the arrest of perpetrators. Late yesterday (Monday), however, we received the report that there had been 4 arrests at Site B police station and 8 at Harare.

Overall, the number of people displaced in Khayelitsha thus far seems to have been relatively small. Between 10pm Sunday night and 2am Monday morning there were 2 to 3 families at Site B police station that had had to leave their homes, and they were taken to stay with friends and family. This seems to have been a common trend, with many foreign nationals preemptively leaving their homes. One Somalian man, Joseph Dumato from V Section, Khayelitsha, said that he his shop had been emptied and that he had lost R30 000’s worth of stock. He was heading for the Somalian community in Bellville, where many Somalian people are said to have gone.

Tonight it was reported that there were apparently 3 foreign nationals at Harare police station that had nowhere else to go, and so are sleeping at the police station. The request was made to South Africa National Civic organisation (SANCO) members in the area to open up a community hall, but permission could not be obtained. An attempt to provide the displaced with shelter will be made first thing Tuesday morning.

To date, and to our knowledge, there have thankfully been no reports of anyone being seriously injured in Khayelitsha. Hopefully this will not change overnight.


Thanks

Tom

SJC