On the front lines

On Wednesday (28th May), I paid a visit to Mary Tal, who heads up Whole World Women Association, an organisation based in Cape Town, dealing with the concerns of refugees and migrants -- and women in particular. Whole World Women is a participant in the Citizen Journalism in Africa project.

It has been good to connect with Mary again. We worked together some years ago, on some radio programmes -- recording and presenting the perspectives of African refugees in Cape Town. Those programmes were part of a project aimed at reducing xenophobia. People thought it was bad then, but looking back now, those were the good days. Then we met again in Johannesburg at the South African in-country training for the CJA project, last November.

When I meet Mary, she looks tired. She has been very involved in the recent xenophobic crisis in South Africa. People have turned to her organisation for help, and she's had to find homes for displaced people. help coordinate collection and delivery of much-needed assistance and supplies, and provide moral support to those affected in the Cape Town region. She's been hosting several displaced women in her own apartment.

"I knew this was going to happen", Mary tells me. "During human rights month (March), I visited various communities as part of an anti-xenophobia campaign, and I could sense the tension and hatred."

Mary attributes the outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa to the recent sharp rise in inflation, and a corresponding decline in the conditions poor people are living in. Food is more expensive, and so is petrol, and so transport costs have increased too. "People need someone to blame," Mary says.

She believes there are many more foreigners in the country than back in 2003, when the two of us worked together. "Back then, not many South Africans had had contact with foreigners", but now, she says, many more people know refugees or migrants from other countries.

Although the attacks seem to be dying down now, Mary is worried about the long-term impact. She's seen families having to separate. For example, South African women who are married to foreigners have continued living in townships or informal settlements, while their children stay with the fathers in suburbs closer to the city, for safety.  

In the Western Cape, where I live, the provincial government has moved thousands of migrants out of the conflict-hit areas and into camps. Mary is worried that these people will be forgotten, and end up more or less permanently in the limbo of the camps, never getting back to the homes they fled when the violence broke out.

Her fears are well-founded. Other poor Capetonians displaced by disasters have found themselves living in supposedly temporary accommodation for years, while promises of assistance and new housing fail to materialise. For example, people left homeless by a tornado many years ago, found that government's assurances of assistance were merely empty promises. They ended up living in a community hall for years.

Mary herself came to South Africa from Cameroon in 1999. Her home has been safe during the current crisis, but she shudders in horror of the thought of having to uproot herself and flee for her life once again.

She mentions something I hadn't thought about. She says many of the men have threatened to return to the communities they have been driven from in the past few weeks, to fight back and exact some sort of revenge for the loss and trauma they've had to go through. She and her colleagues have had to counsel such people, and try to calm tempers. For me, it's a chilling thought. Mass retaliation on the part of the migrants can only need to a spiraling disaster. 

Mary also tells me the tragic story of a woman from Rwanda, who, through shock, suddenly lost her ability to speak after seeing news footage of a man being burnt to death by a xenophobic mob. Having lived through the ethnic cleansing  in her own country in 1994, this was just too much for the poor woman.

Despite the horror and heartbreak, though, Mary says she has been heartened by the response of the security services, and of many ordinary South Africans. She told me of her respect for the police men and women, who in her eyes have worn themselves out during this trying period, doing their best to maintain the peace. She also tells me of many ordinary Capetonians who've opened their houses to refugees, or who have turned up out of the blue with donations of blankets, food, and other supplies.

Two days later, I run into Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign. He tells me that TAC is planning a march against xenophibia in Cape Town next week. Last week too, a bunch of people held a vigil outside Parliament in protest against the xenophobia.

It's another reminder that the recent violence is the work of a minority. The majority of South Africans, from all walks of life, really do believe in the values in our Constitution, and have been horrified by recent events.  But that reminder should not let us be fooled into thinking that things are basically fine. What Mary and others have been saying is true -- there is too much poverty in our rich country, and it's getting worse, not better.  If conflict dies down for a while, let us be sure we don't take that as a cue to relax. We urgently need new ideas and a new dedication to improving people's lives. Values and decency are all very well, but people also need bread on the table.