WHERE THE HEART IS
CONGOLESE hairdresser Salima Mkeyo was devastated this week when she received news that her father had died. Her pain was deepened because she couldn’t afford to make the 4 000km journey from her home in Isipingo, KwaZulu-Natal, to the eastern border town of Bukavu in the Great Lakes region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to pay her final respects.
A year ago this month, Mkeyo, her husband and their three children were violently ejected from their ransacked home, leaving their businesses to be looted by rampaging gangs.
Their youngest child, Abdul, who was a year old at the time, was hit on the head by a rock, which left a huge gash above his temple.
At the busy taxi rank where she runs her hair salon from a corrugated-iron shack, Mkeyo shares her story in fluent Zulu. She makes R400 a day, most of which goes to the shack owner. Despite her traumatic experience and constant threats of violence over the past two years, Mkeyo — who has been in South Africa for 16 years — says her life is still better here than in Bukavu, which she fled in January 2001.
“I think we will die in South Africa. This is our home now and life is much, much better here than in Congo. We have accepted that we cannot be accepted by everyone, but what choice do we have?” — Nathi Olifant
MANY accuse Nigerians of being druglords and pimps. Ebo Aham says he doesn’t even know what drugs look like. “The Nigerians I know here in Johannesburg are into legitimate businesses,” he says. He sold everything he had and headed for South Africa when the Nigerian government banned the import of used car parts.
“My business there was badly affected by the new law. I came here with $400 000 [about R5.2-million in today’s terms] which I had gained through selling my piece of land in my country.”
He owns a salon in Johannesburg and imports hair extensions from Nigeria and Tanzania. He employs three South Africans.
“The perception that all Nigerians sell drugs is totally wrong. Out of 100 Nigerians you will find only 25% are involved in criminal activities.
“The South African constitution says South Africa belongs to all who live in it, but I think foreigners are not welcome here anymore. I am thinking of selling my business and going back to my country.” — Khanyi Ndabeni
EMMANUEL Awiah fled Ghana 17 years ago when a rival group threatened to kill him and his siblings, he says. They were all children of the Nzema king, King Kwasi, in the western region of Ghana. Awiah was in line to take over the throne from his father, but was forced to run instead. “I came to South Africa with nothing. I studied accountancy in my country but I couldn’t find a job with those qualifications here.”
A fellow Ghanaian taught him how to repair shoes. For years he plied his trade in the streets of Johannesburg until he saved enough money to open a shop.
“Even now it is still not safe for me to go back to my home country. My siblings, who are based in London, have been asking me to join them.
“They have been following the news on the xenophobic attacks in the country and they fear that I might be killed. I understand their worry, but I’ve also been around good South Africans. I’ve lived in Soweto and my fellow African brothers and sisters had welcomed and supported my business.
“Those close to me know what brought me here. If it wasn’t for the power struggle I would be leading my people back home,” says Awiah. — Khanyi Ndabeni
‘PAPA, why South Africans hate foreigners?” Syed Nadeem Husain Shah’s 10-year-old son asked his father, who battled to give him an answer. The boy, who is in Grade 4 in Crown Reef, Johannesburg, was ready for school on Friday February 24. Then he was told his school bus driver wouldn’t be able to pick him up.
This was the day of the anti-immigrant march in Pretoria and many foreigners feared it would spread.
By then, houses belonging to foreigners in Rosettenville and foreign-owned shops had been looted.
Shah, a Pakistani living and working in downtown Johannesburg, had heeded a warning call from his colleagues and friends to keep off the streets.
“We were really scared; we didn’t know which corner they will come from, what they will do to us,” said Shah.
The manager of the Town Inn Hotel has been in South Africa for almost 15 years. Due to political conflicts in Pakistan he came here hoping for a better life.
His boy now thinks all South Africans want to kill him but he doesn’t know what he has done wrong.
“Last Friday, I couldn’t even allow him to play with his bike on the road like he normally does after finishing his homework. The city was like a ghost town, there were no activities at all.
“Shops were closed and there was no one on the streets.” — Khanyi Ndabeni
STANDING outside his linen and blanket shop on President Street, Johannesburg, Imraan Khan says he moved to Johannesburg from Lahore, Pakistan, 10 years ago because “it is safe”. He says: “There are better opportunities. It is a good country, I love this country.” His family helped him with money so he could leave his home country and start afresh somewhere else.
“There are too many political killings in Pakistan. It isn’t safe. My family is still there.
“I am here. I am making money. I am sending money back home, but I haven’t been able to visit in a really long time.”
He says he feels relatively safe doing business on President Street, as he is surrounded by a lot of other migrants from Pakistan, but he still lives cautiously.
“It has happened before. We are scared. It can happen any time,” he says, referring to attacks on himself and his shop.
“I don’t know why people do it. I just want to continue doing business and go on with my life. We don’t have guns, we don’t rob people. ” — Jan Bornman
‘Mhis brother.
The two, who moved to Johannesburg from Bangladesh four years ago, have been robbed multiple times since they opened their shop roughly a year ago.
“When I first came here, I didn’t know it was like this. If I knew it was like this, I might have changed the place I went to.”
Hossain says he and his brother left Bangladesh because of political turmoil, and chose South Africa for its business opportunities as well as the existing community of Bangladeshi migrants in Johannesburg.
“I came here for business, to make money. But the situation is so bad, we might leave South Africa.
“They have robbed us five times. They have shot at me twice. We try to tell the police, but they do nothing.” — Jan Bornman
SY mother is so worried. She asked me so many times how I am doing. I tell her everything is fine. So I don’t want her to worry.” Mohammed Mosaraf Hossain owns a grocery store in Jeppestown with AID Zungo’s skin crawled as he watched TV footage of Pretoria residents turning against foreigners and looting their businesses last week. Zungo, who is from Tanzania, was in Johannesburg in 2008 when xenophobic violence erupted, forcing him to flee to Durban.
And then in 2015, he had to flee his shack in Isipingo when locals there turned on foreigners.
Last week he feared the attacks would spread to Durban again and, for a third time, he would have to find a new home.
“I am afraid, very afraid,” says Zungo, who ekes out a meagre living as a cobbler. “When I saw the violence on television, I was terrified.
“I have a very small baby and a wife and if I were to lose them I will lose my life.”
Zungo, who is in South Africa as an official refugee, hasn’t returned to his home country since leaving it nine years ago.
The shy shoemaker from Dar es Salaam was driven out by poverty.
On a good day he can earn R250 but his income is unpredictable.
For now he rents a room with his wife and child in Isipingo and lives a hand-to-mouth existence.
“I send money to my family in Tanzania when I can, but I haven’t seen them for almost 10 years,” he says. — Nathi Olifant
We didn’t know which corner they would come from, what they would do to us When I saw the violence on television, I was terrified
THE restaurant is small and dark, and found up a flight of peeling stairs at the side of a building next to the Claremont taxi rank in Cape Town. But, once you’re inside the Gogo Pumpkin African Restaurant, it is abuzz with conversation among foreigners and locals alike — all making modest livings as taxi drivers, construction workers, informal traders
In the restaurant kitchen, Aasiya Mass prepares big pots of food, adding flavours that remind her of her native Burundi.
She left home seven years ago after a spate of conflicts. While she has been in South Africa the violence back home has claimed the life of her uncle.
“I first went to Durban but then I got married — to a man from Congo — and arrived in Cape Town in 2010,” she says. “I haven’t experienced xenophobia. We are all together at the restaurant. But for me the biggest problem has been documentation.”
Mass must travel to Durban every month to extend her stay in South Africa — a monthly trip that takes a huge chunk out of her salary. If she is late, it can add a whopping fine to her expenses.
“I have only been home once in all this time,” she says in Swahili, “and I miss my family so much.”
Mass says the fact that all foreigners in South Africa are painted with the same brush makes her feel “so bad”.
“We are not criminals,” she says, “especially us Burundians. We work hard to make a living and as a woman it is even harder to find a job. ” — Tanya Farber
We are not criminals. We work hard to make a living