It's just a drama - Zim refugee
2008-04-03 18:24
Special Report
A classical music presenter for the BBC has been arrested and is in custody in Zimbabwe.
Johannesburg - Years of disappointment with the regime in Zimbabwe have left the thousands of refugees in South Africa with a sense of prevailing fear - and cynicism - at the eventual outcome of the polls.
After what they have been through, they have few illusions left.
A typical example is William Kandowe.
He said: "The elections in Zimbabwe are not elections. It is just a drama to see the old man (Robert Mugabe) back in power."
The 35-year-old science teacher - who now ekes out a living doing "piece-jobs" in Johannesburg and volunteer work at the Central Methodist Church - has seen it all before.
Even now, with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's announcement that Zanu-PF has lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence and the opposition's claim that it has won the presidential race, he remains sceptical.
Kandowe said: "It looks as if there will be a rerun of (presidential) elections. That is where they (Zanu-PF) are going to cook and cheat. They don't want to go completely out of power.
"Maybe they will form a union government so they can still cling to power...
"Still, the old man will be controlling the country and the suffering of the people will continue.
"That old man is such a crook," he warns.
Hundreds sleep at church
Like thousands of others, Kandowe made his way to Johannesburg where he found himself homeless and on the streets. Park Station became his temporary home.
It was then that he found sanctuary: "I met some guys at Park Station and they told there was a place I could go."
The Central Methodist Church rises up not far from the High Court in Johannesburg's CBD. A giant cross graces the side.
At night, hundreds of shadows flit across grimy window panes reflected in a sickly yellow glow. It is oppressively hot inside and the air is thick with the stale odour of unwashed bodies.
Each night up to 1 600 immigrants - legal and illegal - crowd inside to sleep.
Four or five hundred more people sleep in the street near the church because they say they feel safe there.
All have their tales of terror to tell. Most are too terrified to return to their homes.
Bishop Paul Verryn's office is in a state of perpetual chaos.
In a waiting area in the corridor outside, a dozen Zimbabweans are deep in a heated debate about politics, religion, hope and redemption.
Grilling in Parliament
Verryn's cellphone barely stops ringing. Most nights - with people thronging to see him for help or simply to tell him their stories - he leaves the church for his home in Soweto at 02:00 or 03:00.
"I refuse to see human beings as a nuisance and I refuse to typeset people," he says.
Last week, appearing before a parliamentary committee debating proposed laws governing refugees, Verryn faced a grilling from MPs who accused him of harbouring criminals.
The committee's chairperson, Patrick Chauke, even warned Verryn that "harbouring illegal immigrants is an offence (and) you can be charged".
But Verryn said he would continue to offer a refuge to people: "I resent being dubbed a criminal because I am opening my doors from a humanitarian perspective.
"This is what it means to be a church. This is a moment of great privilege for us."
The horror of church raid
Referring to recent attacks on Zimbabweans, he mused: "I wonder why we call this xenophobia and we call the white-black stuff racist?
This was evident, he said, during an early-morning police raid on the church in January in which between 300 and 500 of the church's occupants were arrested.
Immigrants were allegedly assaulted, verbally abused, dragged half-naked into the streets and subjected to xenophobic slurs.
In Parliament, Verryn described the raid as a "cynical treatment of human beings, very reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s".
"I myself know these people's stories," he told Beeld this week.
"I don't want criminals to be operating from this building, in this building or on account of this building.
"But by far the majority of people here are upstanding, good citizens. It really is a crime to criminalise them (because they are immigrants)."
In conversations with Zimbabweans at the church, Verryn says most have a "strange mixture of feelings" about the elections.
"There is an indomitable human spirit that will not let go of hope, no matter how impossible it is... some are cynical and say there is no way he (Mugabe) is going to let go of power.
Buoyancy in the air
"They say we should be careful because what we think is positive will turn sour and negative and depressive and fearful and hurtful again.
"On the other hand, there is a buoyancy. It is a mixture... that exposes the most profound human aspirations for the restoration of dignity and humanity, coupled with dreadful memories of harassment, intimidation and humiliation."
Defiance of Mugabe and calls for a new order are counteracted by a prevailing fear.
- Beeld