SA refugee camps still open as court reserves judgement

 

The camps were set up earlier this year after at least 60 people were killed and thousands more displaced in a wave of xenophobic violence across the country. But the estimated four thousand refugees in Gauteng are now faced with a choice of returning to the communities they had fled or going back to their own countries, after local government officials declared the six camps in the province would be dismantled last Friday.

 

The decision to close the camps prompted widespread fears that more violence would erupt. Groups of locals last week issued warnings and threatened that the refugees were not welcome, while many Zimbabwean refugees have said they would rather sleep on the streets than return to the communities or to their own country.

 

Last week, lawyers from The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa and the Wits Law Clinic, filed an urgent application at the Constitutional Court to keep the temporary camps open. Friday’s deadline for the camps to be dismantled saw authorities begin to take down the temporary shelters and residents start packing their meagre belongings while the legal process was underway. The court postponed making a ruling, but a week since the legal application was filed there has still been no decision and the camps have remained open.

 

Anna Moyo, a human rights lawyer from the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum in South Africa told Newsreel on Wednesday that many refugees have left the camps in the confusion over whether the shelters were remaining open or not. She said there has so far been no backlash of violence, but added that there are still concerns of more violence when the remaining foreign nationals are reintegrated. Moyo said the there have been guarantees from government officials that the camps will remain open until the court’s ruling, expected next week. But she said for the government to fulfil its obligations to the foreigners, it still needs to present a proper reintegration plan to protect their safety, as well as undertake an education programme at grassroots level about the country’s refugee laws.

 

At the same time, Gauteng Premier Mbazima Shilowa emphasised on Tuesday that the camps are strictly temporary and can’t remain open. But he added that the provincial government is considering moving the remaining refugees to one site, which would remain open for no more than a month.