From pillar to post for asylum seeker
SUBJECTED TO HOMOPHOBIC ASSAULT Tokiti has spent most of his life fleeing from persecution, trying to find somewhere to call home.
Saadi Ali Tokiti, a 32-year-old gay Congolese man, says that when he tried to report a homophobic assault in June, Manenberg police refused to open a case.
He says he was assaulted and his life was threatened by three men on his way to Thembalethu shelter, Cape Town. They made insulting remarks about him being a “weird” person who sleeps with other men.
Tokiti arrived in Cape Town on May 22. OutRight Action International had put him in touch with People against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (Passop), which helped him with a bus ticket.
He is seeking asylum in South Africa, but says he feels “unsafe and unwanted”.
One of the attackers in June was Congolese and spoke Swahili. He says the man said: “You should stop talking about the Mayi-Mayi [community-based militia groups in the DRC].”
Tokiti says some Mayi-Mayi groups persecuted gay people in his home country. He says the attacker told him: “You should know that as you were not free in DRC and in Mozambique, even here [Cape Town] you are not free.”
Tokiti says the female officer on duty at Manenberg police station denied that he was attacked because he was gay. According to Tokiti, she told him to “stop tarnishing South Africa’s name with your claims because it is one of the peaceful countries”.
It took Tokiti three months to travel from the DRC, through Zambia and Zimbabwe, to reach the Beitbridge border post in July 2017. He had no documentation.
He declared that he was seeking asylum because of persecution for his sexual orientation. He says an immigration officer told him: “We don’t want gay men in South Africa. Go back to where you came from.”
Tokiti went to Mozambique to the Maratane Refugee Camp in Nampula. In his fourth month in the camp, he says he was attacked twice, he believes for being gay.
Fearing for his life, he sought help at the National Institute for Refugee Support in Maputo, but they could not help him while he was living outside the camp.
He started to live on the streets of Maputo, where he says he was harassed by police and criminals.
Tokiti obtained a refugee passport and a bus ticket to Johannesburg from Passop.
At the SA border at Lebombo, he was given 30 days on May 22 to proceed to a refugee reception centre to apply for asylum.
Tokiti says he grew up in Gulu, Northern Uganda and studied for a bachelor of commerce degree. His father left the DRC to take refuge in Uganda in 1985, and died in 2002.
In 2007, the Ugandan government started to crack down on homosexuals and gay rights activists. Tokiti was running LGBTI awareness workshops.
He says he received calls threatening him and telling him “to do your sexual activities in your country, not here in Uganda”.
He fled back to DRC and lived there for 10 years.
In 2017, he was warned that Mayi-Mayi militia were going to kill him. He sought help at a United Nations camp where officials advised him to seek asylum in another country. So he started his long journey to South Africa and Cape Town. – Groundup.co.za