The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will on Monday 23 November meet officials from Makana Municipality managing the shelter, care and reintegration of residents displaced in last month’s looting in Grahamstown.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will on Monday 23 November meet officials from Makana Municipality managing the shelter, care and reintegration of residents displaced in last month’s looting in Grahamstown.
And municipal officials say notwithstanding yesterday’s deadline for a group of around 50 remaining in the safe zone to move out, none of them will be left to sleep on the streets.
These details emerged at a meeting in the Council Chambers at the City Hall Friday 20 November to assess progress in managing the crisis, and determine interventions.
The meeting was chaired by Human Rights commissioner Aubrey Mdazana . With him were HRC attorney Brandon Ainslie, and national commissioners on the Commission for Gender Equality, Pinkie Sobahle and Nomsisi Bata.
Councillors and officials on the crisis joint operations committee, as well as representatives of the Red Cross, the Anti-Xenophobia Group and other civil society groups attended.
This was a follow-up to the HRC and Gender Equality ’s first assessment visit at the end of October and Mdazana indicated that their intervention would be ongoing.
Amid strong pleas for common ground by the Commissioners and most participants, tensions rose as accusations and counter-accusations that have been a running theme since the 21 October looting flared up again during the meeting.
Co-ordination
The meeting’s main theme was the need for co-ordinated action to solve the crisis. Also emerging strongly was an acknowledgement that a one-size-fits-all solution to integration wouldn’t work because the displaced residents were a diverse group. And the police spoke of their disappointment at this week’s tensions in Grahamstown following weeks of calm
Bata spoke first, about Gender Equality’s observations last month that the women they spoke to at the offices of Grahamstown NGO Masifunde Education and Development Trust (ie the Voices of the Foreigners Wives group) had complained they had no safe environment to stay in and said they had been left out of the loop when it came to receiving support , accommodation and food.
She asked whether the forum of displaced people that has been acting for them represented women too.
Bata said she was concerned that in general there seemed to be parallel structures that weren’t integrated. She suggested the model used during and after the 2008 xenophobic attacks in KwaZulu-Natal should be considered, where the municipality took the lead in a co-ordinated effort.
Inclusive
Mdazana reiterated the concern that interventions hadn’t been all-inclusive.
In response, Acting Municipal Manager Riana Meiring noted that the Commission’s observations had been made a month earlier.
Since then, Meiring said, considerable progress had been made, with a joint operations committee comprising government departments, NGOs, the police and municipal officials meeting almost daily.
Meiring outlined actions the municipality had taken since 21 October and said her office had requested financial assistance from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said the UNHCR was coming on Monday 23 November to meet with them.
She said although the municipality had so far been paying for accommodation, they had severe financial problems and couldn’t continue.
Finance
She said, “I do not know who is going to assist us with finance. We have sent requests to the district municipality but there has been no positive response yet.”
Meiring listed actions taken by the municipality thus far as follows:
* Setting up the joint operations committee and meeting most days.
* Appointing two NGOs to manage operations at the safe zone.
* Paying for the displaced people’s accommodation
* Planning how to reintegrate the few displaced people remaining at the safe zone.
* Conducting a survey of how many shop owners had returned to their shops (Of 30 shops surveyed, 21 people were back and shops were open. Three were doing renovations.
* Collating this with Home Affairs and SAPS records
* Holding JOC engagements with stakeholders. “We have held more than 30 community meetings with the purpose of conveying the message of reintegration.”
* Engaging with leadership of the four nationalities represented there concerning reintegration.
* Compiling a list of those still having issues with landlords – and those who do not have a place to go to if they vacate the centre.
* Engaging with the UNHCR regarding financial assistance..
Disappointment
Lieutenant-Colonel Coenie Stander, head of Visible Policing in the South African Police Service's Grahamstown Cluster, described their team’s deep disappointment at an incident outside the city hall Thursday 19 November involving protesting displaced people and bystanders.
Describing how police had met with group leaders for an hour and a half and asked them to consider another way of expressing their frustration, Stander said, “We pleaded. We told them we’d battled for a month to keep the situation calm, we’d really tried.
“We asked them, “Is there really no other way?,” Stander said.
“Their reply was, ‘People here are prepared to be arrested.’”
Stander then described the looting threat on Thursday night 19 November.
“At 6pm [Thursday] night, two people came to the police station at Joza following an incident at their shop.
"They said they had been told their shop would be robbed and burnt that night," Stander said.
The incident and several tip-offs led the police to take action.
“We mobilised all the police.
“Some Pakistanis emptied their shops in Extension 8 and Transit Camp. While they were busy taking stuff out their shops to their vehicles, some people came and took fruit and bread.”
This was theft, not robbery or looting, he emphasised.
“This was really a very sad thing that happened,” Stander said.
“80% really do want the foreigners to come back. Others have their own agenda and just want to disrupt things.”
Nappies
Red Cross Grahamstown representative Annerie Wolmarans responded to concerns raised that the needs of children in the displaced families were not being attended to, and that they weren’t attending school.
“There are not many women or children at [the safe zone], Wolmarans said.
“Mostly men living are there. Their wives are local women from Grahamstown staying with their own families.
“The only women there are the Somali women. There are only five children there in total and none of them is old enough to attend school.
“We take them nappies and formula and we see that children get extra food.”
Unemployed People’s Movement leader Ayanda Kota listed actions taken by the Makana Anti-Xenophobic Concerned Group as follows:
* Housed the group who identify themselves as Voices of the Foreigners Wives and worked with them on a reintegration plan.
* Convened a meeting of landlords and tried to persuade them to change their minds and allow the shopkeepers’ back.
* Held meetings with the community regarding reintegration. He said these included discussions about space for locals to trade as well.
* Asked the province to intervene.
* This week conveyed new rumours of looting to the police
* Through Masifunde and the UPM, raised the profile of the crisis.
Bata acknowledged the value of all the actions taken by various parties to help resolve the crisis – "The municipality, the police, the Red Cross, and those who negotiated with the landlords."
Landlords had been reluctant to have shopkeepers return to their premises because they feared further damage from looting.
Mdazana said the Commissioners would remain engaged in the process and would return for follow-ups.
