Returning to DRC not an option
Repatriated foreigners return to KZN
SOME of the hundreds of foreign nationals who chose to be repatriated after the 2015 xenophobic violence have returned to Kwazulu-natal.
They belong to a group that refused “reintegration packages”, which were put together by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in partnership with the South African government, to help foreigners who were displaced by the xenophobic attacks that rocked the province two years ago.
The package was R3 500 for a single person and R7 000 for a family, and the money was intended to assist those who had fled to the temporary government camps to rebuild their lives.
About 80 families and more than 50 individuals took the package, which included a food voucher of a maximum of R750 a month and a R500 one-off voucher for non-food items.
“It was difficult going back to my family (Malawi) with nothing because I left everything behind when I ran to the police station and the officers took me to the Chatsworth camp, so I had no money or clothes, but I was scared of staying in South Africa,” said Isa Tanis.
Tanis returned to South Africa eight months ago and he has been selling cellphone accessories at the Durban Workshop flea market while he plans his next move.
“I regret not taking the reintegration package because now I feel so far behind my peers who were brave enough to stay in the country. Also, the situation back home was far worse than what I was used to here in South Africa. Sometimes there was only enough food for one meal a day,” he said.
Tanis and seven of his friends, with whom he was repatriated, chose to come back last year because they felt it was safe to return.
“We kept tabs on what was being reported and we didn’t hear anything about xenophobia. I hope I don’t have to go back home again. But if the violence we have heard about recently flares up in Durban, we may have no choice,” he said.
Another Malawian citizen, Stanley Nazeath, 32, was repatriated with his wife, Sarah, and their 6-year-old daughter, Thando, but he chose to come back on his own.
“My wife came to join me here in Durban because the situation was bad at home, but she was really traumatised by the situation at the Chatsworth camp, with the police always roaming around. Now she doesn’t want to come back.”
Nazeath, who spent some time living in Ixopo in 2010, said people in rural areas were very welcoming and never treated him like an outsider.
Unlike Tanis, Nazeath has no regrets about not taking the UNHCR package, saying it did his wife good to go back home and he would not have been able to afford the transport costs without the help from the government.
“I only started experiencing xenophobia when I came to Durban. People would call me kwerekwere (a derogatory term referring to foreigners) but I’ve learned to ignore them and just focus on my job,” said the car mechanic. WITH just the clothes on his back, Daniel Dunia, 40, left the war-torn Kivu village in 2006 in the hope of a better life in South Africa, a country that has rejected him despite yearning to make it home.
“When I left DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), a part of me knew that I might never return because many of the people I loved were being killed every day. Like most Africans, I thought South Africa would be where I would find peace,” said the father-of-three.
After working as a French teacher in a high school for more then five years, Dunia was not rich but he did not struggle to make ends meet.
However, this was not to be in Durban, a city where people spoke languages that were foreign to him because he could not communicate in English.
“It was really hard, I was beyond poor, I missed my family and I felt alone, like everything good had turned its back on me,” he recalled.
First, he became a car guard while working hard to learn English. When his language skills improved he got a job as a security guard where he said he was paid less than South Africans but did not care “It was better than guarding people’s cars for change.”
In 2008, his wife, Amisi Zuena, 28, joined him as they feared for her life back home. A few months later, the couple witnessed the first xenophobic violence to hit the country. By then, Dunia was selling clothes at the Durban Workshop flea market and his stock was looted, so he had to go back to being a security guard.
“When it first broke out we didn’t realise how bad it could get so we just moved around to places where no incidents had been reported and tried to stay under the radar. We had seen worse in Congo so there was no way we were going back there,” Dunia explained.
When the March 2015 violence hit, the couple and their three young children were living in Isipingo, where Dunia had opened a computer repairs shop. Like thousands of foreigners around ethekwini, they fled to the nearest police station where they spent two nights sleeping on hard floors.
They later moved to government camps where victims of xenophobia sought shelter and they lived there until the last camp closed down in June.
“Facing attacks as an adult is not as bad as watching your children not being able to live their lives free of fear. My kids used to have nightmares and we had to take them for counselling,” added Zuena.
With nowhere to go, the family took the R7 000 “reintegration package” put together by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in partnership with the South African government to help the displaced when the camps closed down.
“We went back to Isipingo because we didn’t know where else to go and we knew there would be people who would help us get back on our feet.”
He has reopened his business but has many debts as he is paying back clients whose computers were stolen during the 2015 looting of his shop.
They are contemplating moving to Mozambique should the violence resurface.