by Spencer Chatora, Jean Pierre A. Lukamba & Therésa Müller

Many South Africans have little tolerance for foreigners – especially foreigners from further north in Africa.  We don’t care whether they are here as refugees, as migrant workers or as legal immigrants. We assume that they’ve come to take our jobs, our houses, our lovers. We forget about the millions of people who cross borders the world over, every day, to visit, study, marry, work, stay, start businesses or get medical treatment – including South Africans of all hues. And we forget that thousands upon thousands of our people were harboured by neighbouring countries during the apartheid years.

We live in an age of cosmopolitanism. There are few places on earth where the original population is intact. There are South Africans in every corner of the globe, as there are people from all over the globe in South Africa.

Many people seem to think that migrants leave their countries of origin on a whim, looking for a better lifestyle, prospects and money.

While this may be so for some, most refugees and economic migrants would choose – if such a choice was possible – to be with their families, in familiar surroundings, speaking the languages they grew up with, eating the foods they love, being accepted, respected and understood in a stable, peaceful and safe environment in which it is possible for them to build a life worth living.

It is not easy to go to a foreign country, to risk xenophobic attacks, hatred, abuse, harassment, rejection … and start everything all over again.

What we need to understand, as South Africans, is that fleeing their homeland was not a choice, but a necessity for most refugees … and the hardship they suffer here is often the lesser of two evils — even for economic migrants.

We are not talking here about people who apply for a visa to visit or study and stay temporarily. Nor are we talking about those who have followed due process to immigrate. We are talking about people who leave their homes because of unbearable circumstances and humanitarian crises.

A humanitarian crisis is an event or series of events which represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area. Not all such people qualify for refugee status. A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or is afraid to do so. They become asylum-seekers, hoping that the government of the host country will protect them and allow them to live there. There are others who, though they may not be persecuted, cannot go back because life back home simply cannot be sustained.

It is a curious thing that people from further north in Africa – someone with a black skin – is an unwelcome kwere-kwere (a derogatory term for foreigner), but someone with a lighter skin is welcomed and often revered.  Just an observation.

Why do people leave their homeland? 

• Persecution and torture (journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, conscientious objectors, )
• Armed conflict and war(rebels, regime change)• Violence (rape, murder, destruction of crops and property)
• Discrimination (gays in Uganda, albinos in East Africa)
• Bad governance and food shortages (Zimbabwe)
• Epidemics, famine (Somalia, Ethiopia)• Natural disasters (earthquakes, drought or floods
• Major emergencies (atomic radiation leaks, toxic spills.)

Francistown

So, you’re from Zimbabwe

Yes
Yes, we are

How often do you come here?

Sometimes, always, when we’re hungry
when we’ve run out of groceries

How many of you?

The whole family – import duty is cheaper when you travel as a unit

Where do you sleep?

In the car, in the trailer, in the back of the truck, under the tarp we pray it doesn’t rain

Really, how do you  do it?

We think of the hunger the bread queue empty shop shelves

When are you going back to your country?

From:  Agringada: Like A Gringa,  Like A Foreigner  Poems by Tariro Ndoro

Image credits: Janet Quino