Between a rock and a hard place: Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa

The smell of the homemade paraffin lamp and cooker made my eyes burn. When he saw me rubbing them, Stalin laughed and said, “You don’t get used to it”. We were sitting inside his big white UNHCR tent while he was cooking us a traditional Zimbabwean dinner of beef, tomatoes and pap. From the inside, the tent didn’t seem so big anymore. Every last bit of space was being used. Thin mattresses, blankets, some clothes, pots and pans, onions and potatoes, a cooker, a few bowls for doing the dishes, a broken chair. And Stalin had to share with just one person; most tents had at least six people in them.

In one corner stood five old 20L paint buckets, now filled with the local brew – a mixture of some sugar, water and a powder that contained alcohol and yeast. This made up a potent and cheap alternative to escape the sombreness of life in a refugee camp. Stalin was one of the camp’s brew producers. He hadn’t found work for a month, and was forced to be innovative and resourceful to get by - it’s what Africans know how to do better than anyone else. Desperation breeds ingenuity. “Three cups and you will be dancing” he told me. “It tastes good. Here, try it.” He used a stick to stir the brown and milky looking concoction around in the bucket before scooping it up in a cup and handing it to me.  It tasted like it looked: a mixture of gasoline, porridge and mud.  I guess it’s an acquired taste - or one borne out of a lack of other choices. Either way, every five minutes someone would knock on the side of the tent and come with an empty 2L plastic bottle to be re-filled for R10. Business was good for Stalin’s tent micro-brewery.

I was in a refugee camp in De Doorns, an otherwise scenic little town in one of South Africa’s wine-growing areas just two hours north of Cape Town.  There is a township on the outskirts of town where a few thousand people live that work in the vineyards picking grapes, for 60 rand a day, or about $75 cents an hour. Among them are many Zimbabwean migrants that have left their country and families behind in search for work. There are close to two million Zimbabwean migrants working in South Africa, and the vast majority of them send money home to support their families. This money is one of the pillars currently supporting the otherwise failing Zimbabwean economy.

The little grape-growing community in De Doorns made international headlines last year November when an outburst of xenophobic violence from the South African workers in the township against the Zimbabwean migrants forced almost 3000 of them to flee.  Accusing them of taking their jobs, Zimbabweans were attacked and their shacks looted and burnt down, while the police turned a blind eye.  Many gathered on the town’s rugby field, and within a few days the refugee camp was set up. Eleven months later, they were still living in the tents on the rugby field.

Now the government had decided, after many previous threats, to finally shut the camp down.  I was working with PASSOP, a small refugee rights and advocacy NGO that had been heavily involved in this community over the past year.  After a long struggle, including threatening to take the government to court if they evicted the refugees, PASSOP had managed to negotiate a R1200 ($180) compensation pay-out to the remaining camp residents with the government. I had gotten to know Braam, the charismatic head of PASSOP, five months earlier while I was doing research on Zimbabwean migration to South Africa for my dissertation.  Now he asked me to stay in De Doorns for a week to monitor and document the camp closure process.  

Braam calming the nerves

I drove around until past midnight on Friday night picking up Zimbabweans who called when they had been kicked out onto the street with all their belongings, just hours after they had moved out of the camp and into their rented shacks. Their landlords were fearful of threats circulating that any shacks housing Zimbabweans would be burnt down. So we drove them to a farmer’s warehouse for the night before they had to try to find a place again the next day. They had no other option but to try to live in this unwelcoming place. They had nowhere else to go. 



Belongings outside the camp

There were still no jobs in Zimbabwe, and with elections coming up, all were fearful of the violence that would surely break out there again. Many I talked to didn’t have the money to go back to Zimbabwe; some didn’t even have the R30 ($5) needed to pay one week’s rent in advance to secure a place in a shack. So they sat on the side of the street in their dozens outside the now-closed camp with their belongings, having literally nowhere to go. And yet, they accepted their fate with such patience and calm. No one showed anger, or aggression; no one fought against the closing of the camp.  They had argued all year - now they felt defeated and exhausted.  The dignity and humility they showed in this situation touched me. I ran around all day, negotiating with landlords, calming fears, dispelling rumours. Somewhat miraculously, by the end of the day, all those sitting outside the camp on the side of the street had found somewhere to go. Who knows how long it is before the next wave of abuse and aggression unsettles them again.



I called my sister in Cape Town to let her know I was going to come back to town that evening. She said she was at a spa at the moment, and asked whether I would be back in time to join them for cocktails at a beach bar in Camps Bay for sunset. I wasn’t in the mood - the injustice in the contrast of the life of Stalin, Darlington and all the other Zimbabweans I met in the camp to that of my privileged life in Cape Town tied a knot in my stomach. I went home and fell asleep in my big bed in my warm room with a distinct feeling of sadness and guilt. 

Life in the camp was hard for the Zimbabweans. The days were boiling hot and the stuffy tents became impossible to rest in.  The nights were freezing cold. I would wear five layers and would still be shivering from the arctic wind whipping through the valley. When it rained the field would be turned into ankle-deep mud.

 

The many Zimbabweans I met in the time I spent there struck me for their resilience to the predicament they were in.  The camp was being shut and they were being forced to leave.  A young guy called Darlington told me “although it’s miserable living in these tents, at least here we are safe, protected by security guards and a fence; in the township we will not be”. Nothing had changed over the past 11 months in the township they were expected to move back to. There was still the same unfriendly tension and pervasive under-currents of xenophobia.