African migrants with deep roots in South Africa flee xenophobic attacks

By Tim Cocks

DURBAN, South Africa, June 15 (Reuters) – Princess Adjei, 33, had been living in South Africa since moving from Ghana as a young child when she opened her hair salon in Durban city center in November; There was no other place he called home.

Adjei completed all his education in South Africa, has local friends and speaks Zulu, the lingua franca of this eastern port city. It rarely occurred to him that she was a stranger.

On May 18, demonstrators participating in an anti-immigrant march broke into his hall and looted it. Suddenly even people he knew were demanding that he go “home” to a country he had once visited.

Adjei is one of the victims of attacks on foreign nationals, mostly Africans, accused of being in South Africa illegally by an anti-immigration movement. Many have legal documents and deep roots here.

“They took everything,” said Adjei, surveying the rubble of his first-floor shop among shattered mirrors and broken chairs.

“These were hair pieces that I sold here,” she told Reuters, pointing to a wall full of empty hooks. “There were acrylic nails, six hair dryers, various shampoos. They’re all gone.”

MIGRANTS ARE SLEEPING ON THE STREETS AFTER THE ATTACKS

Adjei said he spent 50,000 rand (more than $3,000) renovating the hall in February. He moved out of his central Durban flat this month.

“Without a living room… I have no money for rent,” he told Reuters, showing the blanket on which he and his 14-year-old son slept on the street next to 200 other migrants.

They camped outside the government’s Home Office office, hoping officials there could verify their residence status.

Other Africans fled towns and cities and sought refuge in the mountains and rugged terrain amid violence that left at least five people dead and sparked a diplomatic row with the rest of the continent.

Reuters interviewed a dozen migrants in Durban; four of them had been in South Africa since childhood.

March and Mart, the organization that started protests last month, reject xenophobia.

“Xenophobia (applies) … to people who come to a country illegally and harass people from that country,” March and March founder Jacinta Ngobese told Reuters in an interview in Durban.

He said his movement avoided migrant violence by directing South Africans’ anger towards the government. Yet the group’s protests often coincide with acts of violence, including the looting of foreign stores and the destruction of homes.

“We are not responsible for the violence,” Ngobese said. “If we had resorted to violence we would have been arrested.”

MIGRANTS SAY THE POLICE ARE FOLLOWING THEM

Some arrests were made after protesters killed five Mozambicans last month and in other incidents. But police responses are rare.

Approximately 200 migrants who fled their homes during the protests in Durban camped in front of the central police station.

Four people interviewed by Reuters, including Adjei, said police escorted them first to a homeless shelter and then to a market warehouse. In both places people already there refused to let them in.

The next day, police told them to leave and then opened fire on them with plastic-coated steel bullets and tear gas, according to the four migrants and some local media reports.

“They told us to look for another shelter,” Congolese refugee Tchomba Kasongo said, limping and showing the bullet mark on his leg. Now they fear June 30, when protesters give all “illegal” immigrants time to leave.

“We never used tear gas on anyone, we never shot at anyone,” Durban police spokesman Booysie Zungu told Reuters. When told of the attacks on Adjei’s salon and other incidents of anti-immigrant violence, he said: “No such case has been reported to us. They need to file a lawsuit.”

A spokesman for the Durban mayor declined to comment.

OLD FRIENDS ATTACK IMMIGRANTS

When Adjei returned to his apartment after finding his living room in disarray, he encountered a South African neighbor whom he considered a friend. They often sat in the corridor chatting or sharing tea, but now she was frowning at him and asking when he was leaving.

This was his third experience of the xenophobia that periodically shakes South Africa. ‌The first was when he was bullied at school during the protests in 2008 by classmates who had previously had nothing to do with his nationality.

Some South African friends continued their support.

Wivene Bahati, a 25-year-old Congolese refugee who was sleeping on the pavement near Adjei after the latest protests, said she was contacted by a former classmate.

“He felt bad. He asked me if everything was okay?” Bahati, who has been in South Africa since 2011, told Reuters:

Immigrants are seen as competition for jobs and services, which can make them scapegoats when shortages arise or government services fail, analysts say.

Anti-immigrant sentiment sometimes rises around election time as politicians fuel it for populist votes; There are local elections in South Africa until November.

Thamsanqa Ntuli, the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, of which Durban is the main city, rejects the idea that politics fuels xenophobia and instead blames illegal immigration.

“We agree with the whole community when we say, ‘Government, you should have started managing immigration properly a long time ago,'” he told Reuters.

($1 = 16.2213 rand)

(Reporting by Tim Cocks; Additional reporting by Rogan Ward in Durban; Editing by Andrew Heavens)