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'I was disturbed'
23/05/2008 15:49 - (SA)
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| Abdullahi Mohamed waits at the emergency camp near Du Noon after being stabbed on Thursday night. |
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Verashni Pillay
Cape Town - Abdullahi Mohamed, 27, leans slumped against a pole in the emergency centre near Du Noon, a sprawling township about 20km outside of Cape Town, nursing a bandaged arm and shivering.
Two young men from the DRC directed us to the injured Somali shopkeeper as we entered Killarney Racecourse outside Du Noon, where about 500 foreigners took refuge after violence broke out in the township on Thursday evening.
I expected chaos and a heavy police presence. I was prepared for the disorder, the crowds and the usual scene in a news story of this magnitude. What I didn't expect was the sight of Abdullahi struggling to breathe as he speaks, shaking because of his injuries.
Lost everything
He straightens up as the photographer and I approach him. He gestures that he can't speak English too well. He doesn't need to speak. Instead he turns and lifts up his tracksuit top to reveal the gashes in his back where he was stabbed in last night's violence. He had been to hospital earlier in the day. Then he raises his hand to show us a figure scrawled on his palm in blue ink: R100 000.
"This is what I have lost," he says softly.
The scene I'm confronted with on the racecourse is not mere chaos. Officials are doing their jobs. What hits me most is the desperation. It's in the black plastic bags piled into corners, filled with whatever could be grabbed in the flight to safety. It's in the cries of children who don't understand why they're here out in the cold and most of all, it's in the hurt on each man and woman's face.
Namibian, Tanzanian and Congolese men come up to us. "You must help us," they say, telling us their stories of loss all at once. One man gestures to his jeans and white shirt. "I left with this last night, I could not go back for my things."
Attack
"This is the second time I have been attacked," says another.
"What's going to happen in South Africa in 2010?" asks one youth.
What disturbs me more than anything is the sense of betrayal heavy in their voices.
Another one tells me he wants to go home. "Back to Du Noon?" I ask, surprised. Police had turned us back when we tried to enter, shouting that shots were being fired. "No," he says. " Better they let us go home to the DRC.
"We can't stay out in the open," he says, glancing at the gathering clouds.
As we chat to the people still gathered under flimsy awnings (the woman and children slept in the raceway garages) vans and cars screech into the camp, offloading people holding black bags.
No-go area
One South African business owner, Jodi Smith, has a van filled with workers from his building company, that he's fetched from Du Noon. "They're Angolan and Zimbabwean," he says. "There are two still in there." He is waiting for a police escort to go fetch some of his workers' possessions.
"Don't go in there," he warns as we drive towards the township. "It's crazy in there."
I had heard the reports of xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg and feared it would spread to Cape Town. Abdullahi is by no means an unusual case: Somali shopkeepers are often targeted in the Western Cape, usually because of their business success, a refugee organisation worker told me. But this time Cape Town didn't seem to follow the pattern of recent violence emanating from Alexandria.
Until a last minute emergency meeting held in the Du Noon community on Thursday night had the exact opposite of it's desired effect. According to the young men who speak with us, they were set upon by the community with stones and bottles, and fled with the clothes on their backs.
The violence coincided with attacks on two Somali shopkeepers in Knysna on Thursday. A policewoman at the camp tells us that there is growing tension and reports of attacks in Strand and Khayelitsha as well.
Cape didn't escape
It seems the Cape hasn't escaped after all.
Disaster Risk Management officials from the City of Cape Town work to direct the dwindling crowd to two halls that have been opened up to shelter foreigners. "We can do nothing except give them emergency humanitarian aid," says Steve Hayward (right, talking to Verashni Pillay) hopelessly. "That's all the city can do for now, it is up to the government to make a political decision about this."
The actual township of Du Noon is a no-go area. We drive onto Potsdam road that runs alongside the township and watch as a man in a red jersey is forcibly wrestled to the ground by police while he kicks and fights, and is bundled into a police van. It takes about five police officers to keep him down.
Police shout at us to turn back as shots are fired. Residents are gathered by the dozens on the outskirts of the township watching the action wide-eyed, talking excitedly amongst themselves. I ask one man what he thinks of the violence against foreigners. "I don't know," he says, turning away warily, his friends looking at our cameras suspiciously.
On the way back we see more people walking slowly towards the racetrack. The woman carried children and the men small bags filled with belongings. City officials say that hundreds of people are waiting on Durban Road in Bellville, and on other main roads, waiting to be picked up.
It seems the exodus is happening all over the province, and indeed the country, as foreigners leave their homes and try to find safety. All they can do is wait it out, or leave.
- News24
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