Cape Town refugees ‘left Methodist church in ruins’
After police removed some 500 refugees from the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town’s Greenmarket Square on Thursday 2 April and relocated them to their temporary new home, the group say they aren’t happy with their new space.
They say that there is a lack of food and sanitation at the new venue at Paint City in Bellville, and some have claimed that the coordinated police operation to remove them from the church they had occupied for some six months had seen women and children beaten.
SAPS operation ‘successful’
South African Police Service (Saps) provincial spokesperson Brigadier Novela Potelwa said that the operation to remove the refugees had been successful.
“At midday, the SAPS forces entered the church, smoothly removed the occupants and loaded them on to buses destined for the identified site in Bellville.”
“A number of buses carrying the refugees and asylum seekers arrived at the Paint City location after 17:00 escorted by SAPS members and moved into a marquee erected by the department of Public Works.”
She said that the group would continue to receive support after the relocation by various state bodies and NGOs, and the group would be monitored by Saps.
“Officials from the Department of Social Development and NGOs were on hand into the evening assisting the group, the majority of whom are women and children.”
Pregnant women claim police heavy-handedness
“They beat me, husband, children, I don’t know what we are going to in this country,” a pregnant lady told eNCA through floods of tears on Friday 3 April, but South African Human Rights Commissioner Chris Nissen says that the group are no longer willing to cooperate with support initiatives.
“There was no beating of anybody,” he said. “every time there’s a removal of the group, they claim that there’s a pregnant woman who was beaten.”
Nissen has been a role-player in the saga ever since he was involved in a fracas at the church, in which group leader Jean Pierre “JP” Balous allegedly assaulted him and Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.
Balous later levelled death threats against Nissen, who said that he has continued to help the group in spite of the bad blood.
Balous is currently remanded behind bars as he awaits trial for that charge, as well as multiple charges of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
Nissen said that his sympathy for the group had waned dramatically. Speaking to The South African, Nissan said that he had been reduced to tears after inspecting the scene the group left behind in the Methodist church.
“I was truly disgusted,” he said. “There was human faeces everywhere, soiled nappies. Broken pews, the pulpit was destroyed.”
“They ruined 150-year-old paintings, and a beautiful organ was destroyed. The church, as far as I can tell, is beyond repair.”
New site ‘more suitable than the church’
Nissen conceded that while the new site does not yet have enough provisions for the group, with beds, extra ablution facilities and food still being supplied by the City of Cape Town, he said that the conditions are far superior to those they had been experiencing in the church.
“There’s no bacteria, lots of space so they aren’t on top of each other,” he said. “Compared to the church, where they were living in appalling conditions, this is adequate and will continue to be better equipped in coming days.”
He said that the group were complaining about irrelevant issues simply to antagonise himself and government.
“They blame everyone else. They haul abuse at me. The fact of the matter is that they just want to keep causing trouble for people who have offered to help them,” he said.
A second faction of the refugee group who had been sleeping on the streets outside the Cape Town Central Police Station have also complained about the conditions, despite leader Papy Sukami having told The South African that he is grateful to the City fro their help.
“We are very grateful to the City for their help,” he said on Friday. “We wouldn’t be able to live out on the streets for much longer, winter is coming soon.”
But then he compared the second site to Holocaust death camp Auschwitz, tweeting that the situation was “inhumane”
“Inhumane situation here in Bellville, the Auschwitz for refugees to die with coronavirus. No water, no electricity no sanitation. Then tell me there’s no xenophobia in Cape Town?”
Sukami’s group of refugees are currently being relocated to a second site on the outskirts of the City in Kensington, with the City of Cape Town assisting with transport.
Repatriation to third country ‘mad’
The refugees are still insisting that they receive support from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in moving them away from South Africa, where they claim xenophobia has rendered their tenancy within its borders untenable, to a country “like Canada or Germany where refugees are accepted”.
Nissen said that this request, especially during the global coronavirus pandemic, was laughable at this stage.
“There are people who still insist on resettlement in a third country, which is not going to happen”
“I said to them when I visited the site earlier and they continued to press the issue, ‘are you mad? You chose to come here [to South Africa] and listen to your leaders who told you to leave your homes and occupy the CBD’.”
‘Home Affairs must resolve situation’
He said that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) was now responsible for finding a neat resolution to the ongoing saga.
“I’m asking Home Affairs to verify them and those that fail to provide valid documents are given a permit to go and rectify the situation within a period of five days,” he said.
“If they cannot obtain the correct permits, Parliament has passed a Disaster Management Act order to remove them, as in have them deported back to their countries of origin,” he said.
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