Solidarity: Demands for the Closure of the Lindela Repatriation Centre

13 11 2008

Coalition Against Xenophobia

The Coalition Against Xenophobia is a broad coalition of civil society organisations, social movements and individuals who are committed to working against xenophobia and towards the improvement and transformation of our society.

We believe that the Lindela Repatriation Centre represents all that is wrong with Governments immigration policies. These policies are premised on the detection, detention and deportation of suspected illegal immigrants. They make the false assumption that immigrants to South Africa are not welcome here. Read the rest of this entry »


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Solidarity: City eviction letter for Blue Waters Refugee Camp

6 11 2008

AEC in solidarity with all poor and vulnerable people everywhere!

Below, you will find the City of Cape Town’s official letter to refugees of Blue Waters Camp.  Residents are resisting the eviction because they fear for their lives by moving back into the townships.  The City is doing nothing to ensure that foreign nationals are safe enough to return (see this article by the Mail & Guardian).  The City is also doing nothing to get at the root causes of the xenophobic pogroms.

City of Cape Town eviction letter to refugees of Blue Waters Camp.pdf


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Afrophobia: ‘Shut out and sent home’

31 10 2008
Pearlie Joubert
Oct 31 2008 at 13:27
Source: Mail & Guardian

Two foreign nationals were killed and a Congolese woman raped in townships in the Western Cape this week as the authorities prepared to close all the refugee camps on Friday. Services will be cut off to the 600 people who are still living in them.

But frantic last-minute negotiations between civil society groups and city officials, including Western Cape Premier Lynne Brown, were under way to halt the closure of the camps.

At the same time, the city, the Human Rights Commission and the United Nations were putting intensified pressure on foreign nationals to leave the camps and reintegrate themselves into society.

The Mail & Guardian has learned that after leaving the camps this week two foreigners were killed, in Hermanus and Parow, and that Congolese national Claudine Tuatu (not her real name) was raped in Khayelitsha’s Samora Machel settlement. Read the rest of this entry »


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Media: ‘Like a concentration camp’

2 10 2008
PEARLIE JOUBERT
Oct 02 2008 06:00
Source: Mail & Guardian

The head of the Blue Waters refugee camp outside Muizenberg, Western Cape, accused the government this week of deliberately starving out camp inmates — as the home affairs department prepares to deport most of them.

After speaking to the Mail & Guardian, camp coordinator Marti Weddepohl was also repeatedly harassed by shadowy individuals, who warned her that she and her family would suffer if she continued to speak to the media.

In an interview last week Weddepohl accused government and the city of Cape Town of expecting her to run “a concentration camp”, adding that home affairs was using “sinister methods” to force refugees out of the camps.

“The Blue Waters camp was specifically designed to provide the minimum of facilities to these people. I find [the methods] very cynical given the fact that it’s unsafe for these people to reintegrate into the townships. Read the rest of this entry »


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Media: Why TAC is taking govt to court over refugees

30 07 2008

Jul 30 2008 at 15:24 - Mail & Guardian

Government inaction in the face of deteriorating living conditions in camps for displaced foreign nationals has forced refugees to take legal steps against the state, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said on Wednesday.

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Solidarity: Destitute, cold, hungry — and beaten up

11 07 2008
caught on cellphone:
*
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Destitute, cold, hungry - and beaten up
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Jul 10 2008 17:46
Source: Mail & Guardian

A pregnant Congolese woman was beaten by private security guards hired by the eThekwini municipality on Thursday evening as foreign nationals displaced by xenophobia staged a sit-in on the steps of Durban’s City Hall.

Salema Moshondi, who is five-and-a-half months pregnant, was left vomiting on the floor after repeated blows to her body - including her stomach - by two security guards.

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Pogroms: Revenge of the subalterns

3 07 2008

Mavuso Dingani

The intensity of the xenophobic attacks in Gauteng has taken the government, media, political analysts, and all the included in the new South Africa by surprise.

As pictures of bloodied men and women, burnt shacks and the atoms of destruction scattered on empty streets were first beamed into suburban living rooms I could just imagine the moral indignation in all those homes. Read the rest of this entry »


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The Country That Never Was

25 06 2008

by Nsingo Fanuel

Zimbabwe, ……………..wait before you……………….!

Excitement gripped me when I was able to go back across the border to visit my family in Zimbabwe. Pleased as I was, I tried to ignore all the media reports on the country’s disregard of acceptable and proper treatment of human beings. Before going home, I braced myself for whatever the hell was to befall me! Imagine going back home to unpredictable situations, disastrous conditions, or even impending death - and when home is Zimbabwe this is no exaggeration. If you have been in South Africa you are immediately suspected of being MDC. Anyway, going home was the only way to please my mum! Read the rest of this entry »


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‘A violent assault on our collective humanity’

23 06 2008
2008/06/20
By AZWELL BANDA, RUSSELL GRINKER and SIV HELEN HESJEDAL

THAT the growing upsurge of xenophobia across all communities and social classes in South Africa has finally erupted into savage and violent attacks on Africans from across our border should be of concern to everyone. This explosion of bigotry threatens to destroy much that is positive in our emerging democracy and undermine the limited gains made to date, especially by working people.

In the wake of this, it is absolutely essential that everyone concerned with the struggles for jobs, social progress and against poverty, puts the fight against xenophobia at the top of their agenda.

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A Collection of Statements and Essays on the May 2008 Pogroms

22 06 2008

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