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DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA — Refugees and asylum seekers in Durban are spending the final days before a September 30 deadline declared by the anti-immigration movement March and March in fear of a new wave of attacks, with residents of a makeshift camp outside the city's refugee reception centre saying they have nowhere safe to go.
Among those living under threat is Bishop Raphael Bahebwa, who is in hiding because he believes he will be killed for speaking publicly about the rights of foreigners in the country. He told Al Jazeera that threats against him are the reason he cannot be seen in public, adding that the campaign against undocumented migration this year feels different from the episodes of antiforeigner hostility he has witnessed during his 26 years in South Africa.
Bahebwa arrived as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and has watched xenophobic sentiment flare repeatedly in the country he came to call home. His fear is not isolated: reports from the pavement camp suggest a community that has already been attacked, dispersed and now faces an uncertain return.
March and March has organised protests in several parts of South Africa this year as part of what it calls a campaign against undocumented immigration, crime and deteriorating conditions in South African communities. The group says the government's enforcement of immigration rules has been insufficient and has warned of further demonstrations if its demands are not met. Its leaders have repeatedly rejected descriptions of their mobilisation as xenophobic, insisting that their target is undocumented migration rather than foreign nationals generally.
For the refugees in Durban, that distinction between documented and undocumented migrants offers little comfort. They say the hostility they encounter on the streets rarely begins with a request to see their papers, and that both documented and undocumented people have been caught up in it.
The timing is politically significant. South Africa holds local government elections on November 4, and migration has become an increasingly prominent issue in the campaign, with political and social debate focusing attention on the country's immigration system and the strain placed on communities.
The immediate focus of the refugees' fear is the camp that formed outside the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) office, where for months hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers slept on the pavement outside the Durban Refugee Reception Centre on Che Guevara Road. Many came from the DRC and Burundi, with others from Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania. They said they had fled their own communities because they feared antiforeigner attacks, arriving at the government office seeking safety. Instead, the pavement became their home.
For roughly four months, men, women and children slept outside, exposed to the elements and reliant on civil society organisations and volunteers for food and other necessities. Bahebwa described the experience as something he had never encountered before in his decades in the country.
Conditions became desperate, according to migrants who spoke to Al Jazeera. They described irregular access to food and medication, and said a man who had tuberculosis died while living at the camp. Al Jazeera has not independently established the circumstances of his death.
The camp was also close to the hostility its residents said they had fled. On September 3, members of March and March confronted refugees and asylum seekers living outside the centre, and violence broke out before police intervened, with at least four people reported injured. At another protest days later, officers stood between the two groups, forming a barrier as tensions rose.
Violence outside the reception centre has not been the only incident. Earlier this year, six refugees working in salons around Durban's Warwick Street Market were beaten by men carrying sticks, according to the public-interest news outlet GroundUp; two were hospitalised. Bahebwa said those migrants also struggled to obtain assistance from the authorities after the attacks.
"Police said we can't open cases because we are foreigners. We had nowhere to go," he alleged. Police have not publicly responded to that specific allegation.
In mid-September, the government moved to clear the makeshift camp outside the refugee centre. Those living there were given a choice: return to the communities they had fled, or accept temporary accommodation at the Lindela facility in Gauteng, hundreds of kilometres from Durban. Lindela is a government-run immigration detention facility used to hold people facing deportation.
The choice divided the camp's residents. Some feared being taken to a facility historically associated with immigration detention and repatriation. Others felt they could no longer endure life on the pavement. On September 15, 274 people were transported by bus from Durban to Lindela, while about 150 others chose to remain in Durban and began trying to find alternative accommodation.
For those who stayed, leaving the pavement did not resolve the problem that had driven them there. Kafuti Muyumba, a small business owner from the DRC and a representative of the refugee community, said many were afraid to return to neighbourhoods where they had built businesses and lives, and that refugees had lost their livelihoods during the months of upheaval.
"People are afraid," Muyumba said, adding that refugees distrust the police, whom they say fail to protect them and are themselves telling foreigners to leave. He said some officers allow March and March to operate, adding: "They came with sticks and say we are attacking them."
His warning is rooted in recent history. "This is not the first time we are experiencing xenophobia. In 2008 and then in 2015 we also experienced this." In 2008, xenophobic violence spread through townships and informal settlements, killing dozens and displacing thousands, and further outbreaks against foreign nationals followed in subsequent years. For Muyumba, those memories make the rhetoric surrounding September 30 difficult to dismiss.
Police have said there are no plans to change their normal policing approach because of the September 30 deadline. With the camp cleared, hundreds of people moved or displaced, and allegations of police inaction unresolved, refugees say the clearest signal they have received ahead of the deadline is that they remain a target.
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