274 leave Durban pavement for Lindela as 200 choose to stay

Five buses left Durban on Tuesday carrying 274 foreign nationals to the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Krugersdorp, ending four months in which the group lived on the pavement outside the city’s Home Affairs refugee office.

About 200 people chose to remain behind and are now in Bulwer Park, where local non-governmental organisations are looking for shelter for them.

The Department of Home Affairs said anyone in the group who now wants to move to Lindela may approach its offices for help with the arrangement.

How the list was drawn up

Cyril Mncwabe, the department’s provincial manager in KwaZulu-Natal, said officials spent months negotiating with the group before transport was arranged. Five buses were booked against a database of 282 names.

The final number came down to 274. Mncwabe said one mother was taken off the list because a doctor confirmed her sick child could not travel, and two other people could not leave because they had been arrested after a confrontation with people marching against illegal immigration two weeks ago. Those two are still going through the legal process.

Those who boarded spoke of exhaustion rather than triumph. Wivine Bahati, who chose to relocate, said the move brings immediate relief on safety and shelter. She said the cause that brought the group to the pavement has not gone away and the unrest has not settled, but that her people can now rest and think again about their lives after a traumatic four months.

Princess Adjei, a refugee, put it more simply. She said it is better for them to leave so that they can be safe at Lindela.

The group will stay at the facility while the government negotiates options with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

What the move settles, and what it does not

The SA First Forum welcomed the relocation. Xolani Zuma of the forum said the organisation advocates for the human rights and dignity of all African people, not only South Africans. He said it is unfair that children and mothers slept on the street for more than three months and bathed in the open, and that this was a violation of their rights.

Living on a public pavement is not a lawful arrangement, and the municipality has bylaws that cover it. What the past four months showed is that a queue outside a refugee office had become a place to sleep, and that neither the city nor the department had a plan for the people in it until this week.

For the 200 still in Durban, the practical questions are the same ones they were on Monday. Where they sleep, how they wash, and whether their papers move forward. The NGOs working in Bulwer Park are trying to answer the first of those.

The department has not said what happens to the applications of those who stayed, or when the negotiations with the UNHCR over the whole group are expected to produce an outcome.

Source: SABC News (website), Durban refugees may request Lindela move: Home Affairs