Life in exile: challenges facing refugees and organisations working to support them in Cape Town
By Charlotte Manicom, Fahamu Refugee Legal Network intern.
This summer, I deviated from my path of working with refugees and ran away to join a Circus in Cape Town.[1] But in a city of shocking juxtapositions (rich, poor; black, white; nature, city), it was hard to ignore the hardships that exist — especially those relating to refugees. There are many difficulties facing refugees in Cape Town, and in South Africa as a whole. But, in return, there exists a vibrant, dedicated group of organisations working for their rights and wellbeing.
I visited a selection of organisations working with refugees within the city and volunteered at the University of Cape Town’s Refugee Rights Project (RRP), which provides legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers. It soon emerged that the organisations’ services, reflections and future plans are as diverse and as challenging as the sector for which they work. When it is considered that South Africa registers the largest number of asylum applicants of any country in the world, this is not surprising.
South African legislation — intention vs. implementation
South Africa has had, relatively speaking, a very short experience in dealing with refugees in the legal sense. Indeed, as William Kerfoot of the Legal Resources Centre puts it, ‘you would have been crazy to seek asylum in South Africa during Apartheid’. There was no mention of ‘refugees’ in the Aliens Control Act and, until 1998, refugee matters were addressed under general immigration regulations. Refugees were therefore in danger of being deemed illegal immigrants. An influx of Mozambican refugees during the 1980s compelled South Africa and UNHCR to cobble together an agreement to protect refugees. Despite its good intentions, the agreement was lacking in several areas; there was no provision for independent appeals and no reasons were given for refusals. After Apartheid ended, South Africa signed the 1951 Geneva and Organization of African Unity Refugee Conventions in 1996. In 1998, the Refugees Act was signed, which further defined refugees and laid down the institutions and procedures regarding their status determination and rights.
In March 2011, the Refugees Amendment Bill was endorsed by parliament. This amends aspects of the 1998 Refugees Act but has elicited concern from civil society groups. A submission, led by Lawyers for Human Rights, outlines several suggestions for changes in the Bill regarding the quality of the refugee status determination process and time frames set around applications and appeals.
South Africa may seem to take a generous approach towards refugees, but there is a damaging gulf between theory and practice. Corruption plagues the system: People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), reports on the ease with which fake documents are acquired. In addition to this, Refugee Status Determination Officers (RSDOs) are under-trained and over-loaded — I was informed that they were expected to complete ten cases a day. Mistakes lead to more appeals, delays and backlogs. New policies — like the Refugees Amendment Act and the Immigration Amendment Act — propose that all asylum seekers must acquire an Asylum Transit Permit at the port of entry, with which they must apply for asylum within 5 days. This is logistically difficult if not impossible given the distances and expenses of travel in South Africa. Queues stream out of the Maitland Refugee Reception Office in Cape Town, where some newcomers wait months to be documented. When their Temporary Asylum Transit Permits expire, they are often unable to renew them in time. Expired documentation can result in fines, imprisonment and even deportation.
Legal aid services
With such a situation prevailing, legal aid is most certainly needed. The Legal Resources Centre, located in the centre of town, offers asylum seekers and refugees free legal advice (and sometimes representation) on a variety of matters. The RRP, part of the University of Cape Town, also offers free legal consultation and sometimes representation to asylum seekers and refugees. One of their team of attorneys accompanied a young Congolese asylum seeker (who had been without papers for three years) and myself to Home Affairs at 7.30 am to aid in his ‘re-documentation’. This, it transpired, was a regular excursion for the attorneys.
Training is also vital in improving justice for refugees; as Kerfoot pointed out, many RSDOs do not know the Refugees Act, despite deciding on individuals’ cases. From my brief experience, I encountered refusal letters riddled with spelling errors — and some with no reason for refusal at all. The RRP has provided training to Home Affairs officials, but such training is in need of repetition due to the consistently high turnover of Home Affairs staff. The RRP’s training has included the Sustained Advocacy for Empowered Refugees Project, aptly abbreviated to SAFER. This three-day course sought to equip those working with refugees and refugee community leaders with knowledge in asylum law, socioeconomic rights, xenophobia awareness and accessing resources. As Tal Schreier of the RRP explained, education is very much part of their mandate, and desperately needed — especially as refugees and asylum seekers are often victims of injustice and need to be able to hold government officials accountable. The RRP has also conducted training with magistrates, police and social workers.
Welfare services
The Scalabrini Centre is housed in a colourful building in central Cape Town and offers a holistic service to around 2,000 people each month. This includes help in accessing employment, welfare services, English lessons, vocational training and a counselling service. Scalabrini also has an advocacy department, working with vulnerable individuals while simultaneously seeking broader change on a policy level. For example, Scalabrini put in submissions regarding the Refugee and Immigrant Amendment Acts to the government, including concerns regarding pre-screening applicants and the tight timeline in which they must apply for asylum.
On the other side of the city is the Cape Town Refugee Centre, an equally well-used, bustling project which serves refugees’ ‘basic needs on a short-term basis’. Vulnerable refugees are assisted with accommodation, food stamps, clothes and psychosocial support, which is provided through social workers. Referrals are made to other relevant organisations. Paired with this is the Empowerment and Self-Reliance Programme, which offers vocational training and integration through the provision of small business grants for economic independence. Ms Christina Henda described the range of difficulties that refugees and asylum seekers face in Cape Town: a lack of employment and housing, ‘a process of applying [for refugee status] that is discouraging’, and a constant threat of xenophobic attacks.
Xenophobia
Indeed, xenophobia was a common theme brought up by the refugee projects I visited. Xenophobic violence rose to a bloody and climatic point in 2008. Although incidences of such a scale have subsided, xenophobic sentiment still exists. Organisations working with immigrants are wary of revivals of such violence. The wave of xenophobia, although terrible, brought together several human rights organisations including Scalabrini, Sonke Gender Justice, PASSOP and the Black Sash, under the name ‘Unite As One’. In an attempt to transmit a positive message of unity throughout South African society, this initiative ran several events and projects, including protest marches and awareness-raising events.
As always, xenophobic sentiment is rooted deeply; its solutions are equally deep and complex. In a country where low wages and high living costs make daily life a struggle, the competition that migration brings is bound to cause tensions. Refugees and immigrants are portrayed as job-snatching, an image somewhat exacerbated by the media. Somalis are at particular risk, as their shop-keeping skills elicit envy among some South Africans. And, as Kerfoot explained, ‘violence is an easy remedy for dealing with somebody who is doing better than you — especially given the violent fabric of our society’. A brief look into South African history exposes the frequency with which violence has appeared in the shaping of the nation. Changing such deep-rooted tendencies is a complex process. More subtle theories of Apartheid’s effect on modern xenophobia, and of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, were alluded to by refugee organisations’ staff. Perhaps the perception-changing developments of recent South African history have equipped the people with an ability to allow quick and sizeable change — an ability that might be applied to xenophobia.
One thing is agreed: eliminating xenophobia begins with wider development, awareness-raising and job creation — and therefore less envy and rivalry. Proposed solutions are varied and innovative; Scalabrini would like to complete a Digital Storytelling Project, which would screen testimonies of refugees’ and South Africans’ tales in areas that were affected by the xenophobic violence in order to promote dialogue among community members.
The Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project, run by the Trauma Centre, is particularly innovative and inspiring. The Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture is set in Woodstock, a diverse neighbourhood near the town centre. Very much rooted in the community, the Centre exudes a welcoming, nurturing tone. In addition to counselling, the Centre receives funding to carry out the Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project. Fifteen South Africans and 15 non-South Africans are brought together to complete training in leadership, mental health awareness and business skills. The project also brings in a story-telling dimension, in which the young people record their diverse stories and thoughts. The project seeks to bring about a ripple effect in foreign-national relations when these young people go on to run similar groups themselves, thus spreading the project’s effects. The recorded stories of the participants are going to be made into a DVD which will be screened around the country. A similar programme runs with adults, which also incorporates a care-work training element in order for the 15 South African and 15 non-South Africans to gain employment.
Ziyanda, who runs the project, recalled the first group session she facilitated, when participants refused to sit in the same room together. Both groups held strong opinions about each other. As time went on, complex details emerged which unravelled and altered such opinions. One such detail is that Somali shop keepers, because they are members of such a tight-knit community, are able to borrow money to open shops from fellow Somalis. These loans, based on trust, carry no interest. They are therefore able to charge less than those South African counterparts who depend on bank loans with interest. It is this kind of awareness, and job-creation initiative, that can erode xenophobic sentiments. As Ziyanda explains, the victims and perpetrators of xenophobic violence ‘need something to fall back on…they need something tangible to offer to society’.
There are several more projects in Cape Town dedicated to refugees. Most have a focus on welfare or skills-training, while retaining elements of other services which ensure a holistic set of services. ARESTA runs self-reliance training and English classes, while working on advocacy and integration projects. Adonis Musati, named after a Zimbabwean who starved to death while awaiting his asylum application, was started by a group of women handing out food and supplies to those living under bridges. It now runs advice, counselling, income-generation, and education programmes.
If your project had unlimited funding, what would you like to develop?
The above question was put to the interviewed organisations. Their answers were as follows:
Scalabrini: Expand services for foreign professionals looking for work, employ a permanent psychologist at the Centre, do more outreach, and implement the digital story-telling project.
Legal Resources Centre: An outfit that provides paralegal advice so UCT and LRC attorneys avoid completing ‘minor’ tasks that do not require legal training.
Cape Town Refugee Centre: Empowerment and self-reliance.‘We want refugees to create jobs, not just seek them.’
Trauma Centre: Scholarships and empowerment through business skills.
Conclusion
The diverse range of services available to refugees and asylum seekers in Cape Town is impressive in terms of its potential and energy. Although huge barriers exist, there is an unfaltering dedication to realising refugee rights — made all the more impressive when it is considered that such work takes place against a backdrop of deeply rooted xenophobia. Such xenophobia brought violence and tension that reaches into everyday society. But refugee organisations are harnessing this ‘energy’ to build better understanding through innovative and dedicated projects. It is this dedication and innovation, in the face of huge difficulty, that makes the range of Cape Town’s refugee organisations so impressive.
The editors would like to note that the author stated that she agreed to provide a copy of this article to each of the organisations interviewed for their review before publication. Despite several attempts, however, she was unable to reach the Trauma Centre to provide them with their copy for review.
This summer, I deviated from my path of working with refugees and ran away to join a Circus in Cape Town.[1] But in a city of shocking juxtapositions (rich, poor; black, white; nature, city), it was hard to ignore the hardships that exist — especially those relating to refugees. There are many difficulties facing refugees in Cape Town, and in South Africa as a whole. But, in return, there exists a vibrant, dedicated group of organisations working for their rights and wellbeing.
I visited a selection of organisations working with refugees within the city and volunteered at the University of Cape Town’s Refugee Rights Project (RRP), which provides legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers. It soon emerged that the organisations’ services, reflections and future plans are as diverse and as challenging as the sector for which they work. When it is considered that South Africa registers the largest number of asylum applicants of any country in the world, this is not surprising.
South African legislation — intention vs. implementation
South Africa has had, relatively speaking, a very short experience in dealing with refugees in the legal sense. Indeed, as William Kerfoot of the Legal Resources Centre puts it, ‘you would have been crazy to seek asylum in South Africa during Apartheid’. There was no mention of ‘refugees’ in the Aliens Control Act and, until 1998, refugee matters were addressed under general immigration regulations. Refugees were therefore in danger of being deemed illegal immigrants. An influx of Mozambican refugees during the 1980s compelled South Africa and UNHCR to cobble together an agreement to protect refugees. Despite its good intentions, the agreement was lacking in several areas; there was no provision for independent appeals and no reasons were given for refusals. After Apartheid ended, South Africa signed the 1951 Geneva and Organization of African Unity Refugee Conventions in 1996. In 1998, the Refugees Act was signed, which further defined refugees and laid down the institutions and procedures regarding their status determination and rights.
In March 2011, the Refugees Amendment Bill was endorsed by parliament. This amends aspects of the 1998 Refugees Act but has elicited concern from civil society groups. A submission, led by Lawyers for Human Rights, outlines several suggestions for changes in the Bill regarding the quality of the refugee status determination process and time frames set around applications and appeals.
South Africa may seem to take a generous approach towards refugees, but there is a damaging gulf between theory and practice. Corruption plagues the system: People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), reports on the ease with which fake documents are acquired. In addition to this, Refugee Status Determination Officers (RSDOs) are under-trained and over-loaded — I was informed that they were expected to complete ten cases a day. Mistakes lead to more appeals, delays and backlogs. New policies — like the Refugees Amendment Act and the Immigration Amendment Act — propose that all asylum seekers must acquire an Asylum Transit Permit at the port of entry, with which they must apply for asylum within 5 days. This is logistically difficult if not impossible given the distances and expenses of travel in South Africa. Queues stream out of the Maitland Refugee Reception Office in Cape Town, where some newcomers wait months to be documented. When their Temporary Asylum Transit Permits expire, they are often unable to renew them in time. Expired documentation can result in fines, imprisonment and even deportation.
Legal aid services
With such a situation prevailing, legal aid is most certainly needed. The Legal Resources Centre, located in the centre of town, offers asylum seekers and refugees free legal advice (and sometimes representation) on a variety of matters. The RRP, part of the University of Cape Town, also offers free legal consultation and sometimes representation to asylum seekers and refugees. One of their team of attorneys accompanied a young Congolese asylum seeker (who had been without papers for three years) and myself to Home Affairs at 7.30 am to aid in his ‘re-documentation’. This, it transpired, was a regular excursion for the attorneys.
Training is also vital in improving justice for refugees; as Kerfoot pointed out, many RSDOs do not know the Refugees Act, despite deciding on individuals’ cases. From my brief experience, I encountered refusal letters riddled with spelling errors — and some with no reason for refusal at all. The RRP has provided training to Home Affairs officials, but such training is in need of repetition due to the consistently high turnover of Home Affairs staff. The RRP’s training has included the Sustained Advocacy for Empowered Refugees Project, aptly abbreviated to SAFER. This three-day course sought to equip those working with refugees and refugee community leaders with knowledge in asylum law, socioeconomic rights, xenophobia awareness and accessing resources. As Tal Schreier of the RRP explained, education is very much part of their mandate, and desperately needed — especially as refugees and asylum seekers are often victims of injustice and need to be able to hold government officials accountable. The RRP has also conducted training with magistrates, police and social workers.
Welfare services
The Scalabrini Centre is housed in a colourful building in central Cape Town and offers a holistic service to around 2,000 people each month. This includes help in accessing employment, welfare services, English lessons, vocational training and a counselling service. Scalabrini also has an advocacy department, working with vulnerable individuals while simultaneously seeking broader change on a policy level. For example, Scalabrini put in submissions regarding the Refugee and Immigrant Amendment Acts to the government, including concerns regarding pre-screening applicants and the tight timeline in which they must apply for asylum.
On the other side of the city is the Cape Town Refugee Centre, an equally well-used, bustling project which serves refugees’ ‘basic needs on a short-term basis’. Vulnerable refugees are assisted with accommodation, food stamps, clothes and psychosocial support, which is provided through social workers. Referrals are made to other relevant organisations. Paired with this is the Empowerment and Self-Reliance Programme, which offers vocational training and integration through the provision of small business grants for economic independence. Ms Christina Henda described the range of difficulties that refugees and asylum seekers face in Cape Town: a lack of employment and housing, ‘a process of applying [for refugee status] that is discouraging’, and a constant threat of xenophobic attacks.
Xenophobia
Indeed, xenophobia was a common theme brought up by the refugee projects I visited. Xenophobic violence rose to a bloody and climatic point in 2008. Although incidences of such a scale have subsided, xenophobic sentiment still exists. Organisations working with immigrants are wary of revivals of such violence. The wave of xenophobia, although terrible, brought together several human rights organisations including Scalabrini, Sonke Gender Justice, PASSOP and the Black Sash, under the name ‘Unite As One’. In an attempt to transmit a positive message of unity throughout South African society, this initiative ran several events and projects, including protest marches and awareness-raising events.
As always, xenophobic sentiment is rooted deeply; its solutions are equally deep and complex. In a country where low wages and high living costs make daily life a struggle, the competition that migration brings is bound to cause tensions. Refugees and immigrants are portrayed as job-snatching, an image somewhat exacerbated by the media. Somalis are at particular risk, as their shop-keeping skills elicit envy among some South Africans. And, as Kerfoot explained, ‘violence is an easy remedy for dealing with somebody who is doing better than you — especially given the violent fabric of our society’. A brief look into South African history exposes the frequency with which violence has appeared in the shaping of the nation. Changing such deep-rooted tendencies is a complex process. More subtle theories of Apartheid’s effect on modern xenophobia, and of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, were alluded to by refugee organisations’ staff. Perhaps the perception-changing developments of recent South African history have equipped the people with an ability to allow quick and sizeable change — an ability that might be applied to xenophobia.
One thing is agreed: eliminating xenophobia begins with wider development, awareness-raising and job creation — and therefore less envy and rivalry. Proposed solutions are varied and innovative; Scalabrini would like to complete a Digital Storytelling Project, which would screen testimonies of refugees’ and South Africans’ tales in areas that were affected by the xenophobic violence in order to promote dialogue among community members.
The Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project, run by the Trauma Centre, is particularly innovative and inspiring. The Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture is set in Woodstock, a diverse neighbourhood near the town centre. Very much rooted in the community, the Centre exudes a welcoming, nurturing tone. In addition to counselling, the Centre receives funding to carry out the Refugee and Asylum Seeker Project. Fifteen South Africans and 15 non-South Africans are brought together to complete training in leadership, mental health awareness and business skills. The project also brings in a story-telling dimension, in which the young people record their diverse stories and thoughts. The project seeks to bring about a ripple effect in foreign-national relations when these young people go on to run similar groups themselves, thus spreading the project’s effects. The recorded stories of the participants are going to be made into a DVD which will be screened around the country. A similar programme runs with adults, which also incorporates a care-work training element in order for the 15 South African and 15 non-South Africans to gain employment.
Ziyanda, who runs the project, recalled the first group session she facilitated, when participants refused to sit in the same room together. Both groups held strong opinions about each other. As time went on, complex details emerged which unravelled and altered such opinions. One such detail is that Somali shop keepers, because they are members of such a tight-knit community, are able to borrow money to open shops from fellow Somalis. These loans, based on trust, carry no interest. They are therefore able to charge less than those South African counterparts who depend on bank loans with interest. It is this kind of awareness, and job-creation initiative, that can erode xenophobic sentiments. As Ziyanda explains, the victims and perpetrators of xenophobic violence ‘need something to fall back on…they need something tangible to offer to society’.
There are several more projects in Cape Town dedicated to refugees. Most have a focus on welfare or skills-training, while retaining elements of other services which ensure a holistic set of services. ARESTA runs self-reliance training and English classes, while working on advocacy and integration projects. Adonis Musati, named after a Zimbabwean who starved to death while awaiting his asylum application, was started by a group of women handing out food and supplies to those living under bridges. It now runs advice, counselling, income-generation, and education programmes.
If your project had unlimited funding, what would you like to develop?
The above question was put to the interviewed organisations. Their answers were as follows:
Scalabrini: Expand services for foreign professionals looking for work, employ a permanent psychologist at the Centre, do more outreach, and implement the digital story-telling project.
Legal Resources Centre: An outfit that provides paralegal advice so UCT and LRC attorneys avoid completing ‘minor’ tasks that do not require legal training.
Cape Town Refugee Centre: Empowerment and self-reliance.‘We want refugees to create jobs, not just seek them.’
Trauma Centre: Scholarships and empowerment through business skills.
Conclusion
The diverse range of services available to refugees and asylum seekers in Cape Town is impressive in terms of its potential and energy. Although huge barriers exist, there is an unfaltering dedication to realising refugee rights — made all the more impressive when it is considered that such work takes place against a backdrop of deeply rooted xenophobia. Such xenophobia brought violence and tension that reaches into everyday society. But refugee organisations are harnessing this ‘energy’ to build better understanding through innovative and dedicated projects. It is this dedication and innovation, in the face of huge difficulty, that makes the range of Cape Town’s refugee organisations so impressive.
The editors would like to note that the author stated that she agreed to provide a copy of this article to each of the organisations interviewed for their review before publication. Despite several attempts, however, she was unable to reach the Trauma Centre to provide them with their copy for review.
[1] The Circus, Zip Zap, teaches circus arts to hundreds of Cape Town’s children, from all backgrounds. Circus arts are used as a means to teach, express and provide future employment.
