Siyafana Sonke Action Campaign report on the wellbeing of refugees camped in Durban

[00:00:00]Let's go to Durban now, and activist organizations raising concerns about the conditions of refugees who are still camped out in in Durban. [clears throat] These are people who are hoping to be transported back to Malawi. The activist Yeshlin Govender joining us now.

[00:00:19]Yeshlin, good afternoon to you. Thanks for your time. What is the the concern of activists around these people who are camping out in Durban?

[00:00:29]>> Good afternoon. Okay, firstly, just a bit of a correction there. You are correct in referring to them as refugees. However, these are not Malawians that are that are attempting to enter the repatriation process.

[00:00:42]Right? These are refugees who want to be reintegrated into South African society.

[00:00:48]Right? They are currently camping outside I'm using the word camping but loosely, but they are currently they're sleeping on the pavement outside the Home Affairs Refugee Office on Che Guevara Road in Durban.

[00:01:02]Right? They've been forcibly displaced from their communities and from their homes.

[00:01:06]They have attempted to return to their communities. They have been rejected and attacked, intimidated, prevented from returning to their communities. So, they then came back to the Home Affairs office here to seek sanctuary.

[00:01:19]Right?

[00:01:20]And that is why they that is why we have 450 women women, children, elderly people with chronic medical illnesses who are currently living outside in the cold in winter.

[00:01:32]>> And what are your your concerns? Is there just a lack of urgency from officials?

[00:01:38]>> Absolutely. This this group of refugees has been here for eight weeks.

[00:01:43]Right?

[00:01:44]Eight weeks. Eight weeks in which civil society has consistently raised this issue. There have been direct engagement on a local government level with the mayor's office. There been direct engagements with the provincial government with the with the premier's office. There's been direct engagement with national government with the inter-ministerial committee on migration.

[00:02:05]All three levels of government have consistently failed to act. I I want to make it clear to you and to anyone listening here that a meeting was held with the inter-ministerial committee.

[00:02:18]Our organization, Sikhahane Sonke, was asked to write to the to provide to the to to write to the committee, present them with the conditions of the refugees at Che Guevara, and present them with options for relocation and for them to be provided with temporary emergency accommodation.

[00:02:37]We drove We wrote to the to the to the IMC, the inter-ministerial committee. We provided them with the facts they requested. We provided them with three options of local community sports grounds which had been used in 2014 and 2008 to house previous victims of xenophobic violence. And I can tell you right now, today, the inter-ministerial committee acknowledged receipt of our correspondence and then failed to provide any reply thereafter.

[00:03:09]>> Yeshlin, thank you very much for raising this concern. Yeshlin Govender, Sikhahane Sonke, activist raising concerns about this group of refugees, as he says, losing using the term loosely in Durban.