Refugees on the poll agenda
ICHARD Obidima’s scissors fly over little Heath Prior’s head. The barber has gently placed a big, strong hand on the 2-year-old’s back. It’s a bit of comfort as he swops swiftly between blades to shape a mohawk above a pair of small ears.
As he swivels the boy around to see the top of his head in the mirror, Obidima starts to tell a brief history of his life. He’s “about 40 years”, from Imo state in southeast Nigeria. He’s been selling his skills in Yeoville, Joburg, for nearly a decade, and has now set up home here with his wife and two young daughters.
But this wasn’t his first destination on an enterprising journey. He packed his travelling bags for Libya about 10 years ago and, full of ambition, set up a barber’s stall in a town outside Tripoli.
“It’s the same as this,” Obidima’s fingers filter lightly through the toddler’s fine hair. “They look like this, so I know how to cut for this style.”
Libya, however, had its issues. Muammar Gaddafi was still in control, and a notorious racism against black Africans existed under his dictatorship. It wasn’t the life the young Nigerian wanted for himself, so he turned his sights on the southern end of his continent instead.
Although it is a public holiday when we meet in his booth at the corner of Hunter and Cavendish streets, behind the main market in Yeoville, the street is alive. Customers exchange stories with traders from all over the continent. Most are here because of the symbolism of April 27, 1994. But it seems our fifth democratic election and our 20 years of liberation have had a different impact on the country’s 300 000 refugees.
Obidima holds his pair of scissors up in the air for a moment when it’s revealed that it’s Freedom Day. He pauses and then admits that he didn’t know.
“Maybe I’m not the only person who doesn’t know that.”
He carries on clipping and is quiet for a while. As he brushes a film of hair off the little boy’s forehead, he comments: “But this is not only about a special one day. We must love another, whether black or white, whether we are from wherever, because in heaven, we are all the same.
“While we are here on earth, the issue for us is money. Can we survive?”
It’s a question that has troubled the liberal outlook of our national policies on refugees for the past few years, and political parties can’t avoid it – especially where there is unemployment and poverty.
The xenophobic violence in 2008 was a turning point. The fiery murder of Mozambican migrant Ernesto Nhamuave in Ramaphosa informal settlement, not far from Joburg, was one of at least 62 killings. But the world and the nation were horrified by the pictures of the young man set alight by an angry mob nearly six years ago this month. The scenes of bloodshed and fear mobilised new patterns of thought about foreigners.
Not all of it was anti-immigration. Not all of it was as positive as it had been
RDialogue over secure future for foreigners must continue, writes
before either.
In 1998, the Refugees Act, a highly prized piece of legislation, entered South African life. There would be no camps, and there would be freedom of movement, the right to work and access to basic social services, health care and schools. We would offer protection to and assist those fleeing persecution and instability.
That same year in Tanzania, a country which had welcomed soldiers of our liberation movements, a revised refugee policy was introduced. While the legal status of urban refugees was recognised, there would still be camps and restrictions. The same philosophy was playing out in Kosovo and elsewhere.
So our country was something of a beacon. We had only recognised refugees just before the ANC came into power, when we signed the UN and Organisation of African Unity conventions. But the numbers have swelled significantly since then.
According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, the “total population of concern” is at nearly 300 000. This is nowhere near as high as the exodus that has resulted, say, out of the conflict in Syria, but it’s climbing, and political parties and the government are starting to suggest controls which were not there before.
In February, Minister of Home Affairs Naledi Pandor published draft regulations to amend the Refugees Act. This followed an amendment bill in 2008 which, in some ways, seemed to want to take away certain rights.
A particular concern was the transit permit. Right now, asylum-seekers have a 14-day “pass” which allows them to travel to the nearest refugee office to sort out their paperwork, but five days is being proposed. And since Home Affairs was forced to close refugee offices in Cape Town, Joburg and Port Elizabeth after court cases following complaints by businesses operating around these offices, foreigners have to go even further. Designated offices are now in Pretoria, Musina and Durban.
Yet, even as protests about poverty and services rise among South Africans, who have seen foreigners allowed to open successful small businesses, few politicians have used refugees as a lever on the campaign trial. Anti-immigration rhetoric has been rare, with particularly the ANC insisting it’s not tolerated.
Spokesman Jackson Mthembu goes so far as to describe it as “anti-ANC”. This is in spite of worries around the drafting of the party’s Peace and Stability document of 2012, during which suggestions were made to move refugee centres to border areas.
“We respect refugees,” he says. “Nobody has taken another route, so why now? None of our resolutions go against that. We know where we ourselves come from. We were refugees ourselves. We were accepted.”
But Consortium Refugees and Migrants (Cormsa) executive director Sicel’mpilo Shange-Buthane doesn’t believe it is as simple as that.
“When you look at it from a political point of view, refugees don’t hold any weight. They don’t have a right to vote, so it’s not a constituency political parties take seriously. At the same time, we know that some leaders use the issue of refugees, saying this is a reason the country is grappling with issues like unemployment.
“Statements like those feed into a negative perspective. But we are lucky. Antiimmigration is not an election ticket.”
A dialogue between politicians and civil society over a secure future for refugees may also finally be happening. Cormsa and other NGOs got the conversation going before the elections in 2009 when they asked political parties not to misuse the issue of refugees while campaigning.
But there was a lull after that. It’s taken nearly two years, for instance, for the organisation to get a response to a memorandum it handed to Home Affairs in Joburg when it staged a march there on World Refugee Day 2012.
“We heard from them last week and are now in process of setting up a meeting, so there is light, even if it’s a little bit dim.”
Mthembu says the ANC will also be spotlighting the issue after the elections.
“We’re looking at those who have got businesses, which is a tiny minority in our view. They should also be contributing to the fiscus through paying their dues as working South Africans do. So we are having an investigation into this matter because we find, that when we are moving around, one of the big issues is that almost every corner shop is a shop of refugees. “They must add value to South Africa.” Home Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa is adamant the government feels the same way. “The issue of refugees is not a function of us. It’s a function of socio- political conditions in different countries. We certainly cannot then say we are going to restrict the number of refugees. We abide by all the protocols we have signed; we’re guided by them.”
“Our main challenge now is in developing a system which will enable us to distinguish between economic refugees and others. That, in essence, is what is leading to a clogging of the system.
“This is especially true when it comes to how we employ different forms of labour, such as in the mining sector.”
First-time campaigners the EFF acknowledge those kinds of challenges. While spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi believes refugees should be able to participate in the poll because they should be “integrated into all the activities of South Africa, including its political life”, the “permanent border problem of Africa” remains.
The DA’s spokesman on home affairs, Manny de Freitas, also worries about what he calls “uneducated scavengers”, but he says, while we need to control our ports of entry, we must encourage refugees who “can help build South Africa economically”.
“If truth be told, we have a xenophobic government which doesn’t harness the skills of foreigners who could, in turn, help educate our own people. But when it comes to an election, it’s the least sexy election issue there is.
“People just have this bad image of foreigners, and the problem is, it’s our own fault. We’ve allowed everyone in.” Obidima may not look at it that way. There’s praise music playing out of an old TV set positioned above the mirrors. It’s his favourite: Emmanuel TV, a pentecostal Christian station live from Nigeria. And it’s complemented by the smiling faces of Reverend Dr O Ezekiel and his wife Reverend Dr Mercy Ezekiel on a poster on the barber’s cupboard. They represent home, far away.
So while he’s grateful to have the chance to change his life in a free South Africa, he still misses where he’s from. “We work hard here, but it’s if I’m at home that I’m happy.”