http://www.internafrica.org/2008/05/refugee-chaos-grows.html

Refugee Chaos Grows

Without a co-ordinated intergovernmental strategy to manage the aftermath of the xenophobic violence, the city’s safe centres, community halls and churches will continue to battle to accommodate the more than 20,000 displaced foreigners who need shelter, food and medical assistance.

And conditions at the various safe sites and military bases vary from adequate to inhumane, with thousands of Somalian refugees housed at Wynberg’s Youngsfield military base complaining that the army is barring them from leaving the site.

Refugees here were issued with an armband and a number when they arrived, and body search before they could enter the main hall.

Many complained that they did not want to be housed in “camps” reminiscent of concentration camps.

The press was barred from entering the site where, according to the couple of hundred refugees outside, thousands of people were being housed.

At other facilities, there was overcrowding, lack of ablution facilities, and too few volunteers to feed the thousands of people.

Mayor Helen Zille said refugees had to go to safe sites where they could be registered and either reintegrated or given help to return home, rather than go to churches and halls throughout the city.

She said these venues needed to be left open for planned activities, such as weddings and other events.

A City of Cape Town electricity truck collected three families on Monday from a church in Wynberg to take them to a centre in Tokai. But nearby, the Wynberg Methodist Church was housing about 50 refugees without any instruction to take people to larger centres.

Craig Stewart, of the Warehouse Trust affiliated to St John’s parish, said that while church groups, NGOs and community organisations were helping with relief work, the operation was being hampered by the lack of a co-ordinated strategy by the city and the provincial government.

He said there was an urgent need for a more comprehensive plan to be drafted for future situations such as this. But, until then, most of the relief was coming from the “people of Cape Town”.

Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, of the city disaster management centre, said yesterday that while the city sent the province regular updates, provincial representatives were not at the control centre.

Zille wrote to the provincial government on Monday, asking for more co-operation in relief and reintegration efforts.

Palesa Morudu, of Premier Ebrahim Rasool’s office, said a joint operations centre managed by the province and the city had not yet been activated. The city was handling most of the relief work as the Western Cape had not yet been declared a disaster area.

She said the province was focusing on the reintegration of displaced people to their communities by ensuring visible policing at hot spots. “The community is also taking it upon itself to reintegrate people.”

Morudu said many of the safe centres were far from the displaced people’s homes and work, making reintegration more difficult.

Zille agreed to open community halls to refugees as a temporary measure, but most of the displaced people being housed by the city are in six safe sites, including Silverstream in Atlantis and Soetwater in Kommetjie.

She called yesterday for the “urgent deployment” of a peacekeeping force of the South African National Defence Force to help with the reintegration of people.

Conditions were dire at the makeshift Silverstream refugee camp on the West Coast yesterday, where there was a lack of food, bedding, electricity, sanitation, medical help, phones and staff.

About six volunteers were trying to help about 600 men, women and children, and appealed to the public and businesses to step in with supplies and assistance.

Spokespersons had been elected for each of the six nationalities, who relayed their needs to the volunteers.

Doctors were needed, as several HIV-positive people had skipped ARV dosages, a man was throwing up worms and another, whose eardrum burst when he was struck by a brick on Thursday night, had still not been attended to.

Several people complained that the rice and soup they were given for dinner on Sunday night had given them a stomach bug. They also complained that they were given only a few slices of dry bread for breakfast, without coffee or tea, and no lunch.

About 100 children and their parents slept on plastic sheets on the grass and without bedding in the “freezing” cold in three tents on Sunday night. Several were bitten by sand fleas.

Carpets were put down in the tents yesterday.

Many people were hoping to return to their home countries. A Zimbabwean man said if he had to die, he would rather die at home.

Many said they were afraid that the bucket toilet system would cause the spread of disease, and several complained that they had not been able to take a hot bath or shower.

Project manager Richard Muller, a pastor from the Du Noon area, said people at the camp needed bedding, food, baby food, soap, towels, sanitary towels, free telephones so that people could call their families, transport, and toys for the children.

At Youngsfield, mainly Somalian women complained that there was no food and that their babies were suffering from sleeping in the cold hall. They said the army had stopped them from leaving the camp.

Sam Mkhwanazi, spokesperson for Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, said he did not know about the problem, but he would investigate conditions at the base. The South African Human Rights Commission said it would send a task team to the base.

Dean Peacock, of the Sonke Gender Justice, called for the UN Human Rights Commission to manage the registration of refugees at camps, to eliminate the confusion of organisations putting people on different lists.

Paula Akugizibwe, from the Aids & Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, said a study of the health conditions at 33 sites across the city has been conducted and the situation is beginning to look dire.

At the KTC hall in Nyanga, for example, 58 people are suffering from diarrhoea and one person is critically ill, according to civil society groups.

“There are a lot of reports of sick children and people with diarrhoea. There is poor infection control. People are living in overcrowded tents. Chronic medication is another issue,” said Akugizibwe.

She said the HIV/Aids and TB stigma was rife at some of the sites, and people needing anti-retroviral treatment were reluctant to ask for chronic medication. This made it hard for them to establish how many people needed the treatment.

Treatment Action Campaign leader Zackie Achmat said there was also a serious danger of a TB outbreak in the congested tents. There were about 100 people to every tent.

But the city’s health department said it was working closely with the province and NGOs to monitor health conditions at the refugee sites.

Ivan Bromfield, the city’s acting director of health, said the city had been divided into eight sections that can be more easily managed. “Environmental health (officials) and a nurse will visit the places daily to look at sanitation, water, waste and ventilation.”

He said diarrhoea was the biggest concern and salt-sugar solutions were being distributed, particularly to the children to keep them hydrated.

Meanwhile, the Black Sash has praised the Masiphumelele community for re-integrating foreigners back into the area and bringing looters in the community to book.

Black Sash advocacy programme manager Nkosikhulule Nyembezi said most of the people arrested were youths of schoolgoing age. – Cape Times