Organizations assisting refugees and asylum seekers have urged South Africans to differentiate between refugees, asylum seekers, and economic migrants.
On Saturday, various groups convened not only to protest xenophobia but also to inform refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants about their legal rights.
These organizations also marked the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN) International Refugee Convention, a treaty that established the definition of a refugee and detailed the legal safeguards, entitlements, and support refugees should receive.
South Africa ratified the convention in 1996, subsequently integrating these protections into its Refugees Act.
Attendees at the Jubilee Community Centre in Observatory, Cape Town, carried the psychological impact of past xenophobic attacks, and recent ultimatums and demonstrations calling for undocumented foreign nationals to depart South Africa had heightened their anxiety.
Flory Tshimbalanga-Kabambi, a civil society leader, explained that asylum seekers and refugees are distinct from economic migrants. She noted that the former two groups are escaping violence and persecution. The primary distinction, she added, is that refugees possess documentation, whereas asylum seekers are in the process of obtaining it, both groups being legally protected.
“Anyone can be a foreigner, but people are different. There are people who’ve got documentation in terms of Section 24, there’s those with Section 22, those with Section 27 and there’s PR [permanent residence]. When you see people out there, everyone puts people under one basket, which is not supposed to be.
“People need to have the knowledge to know who is a refugee, who is an asylum seeker and who is a migrant. That’s what this session is for today – we just want to bring it across to a lot of South Africans, there is a difference, you have to know that now. When you hear that word ‘refugee’, it means you yourself might be a refugee without knowing it – it means ‘people on the move’,” said Tshimbalanga-Kabambi.
Shaheed Mohamed, secretary of the Worker International Vanguard League, suggested that the intermittent outbreaks of xenophobia serve as a “diversion” orchestrated by major political parties experiencing declining support.
“They need to create a diversion, in terms of maintaining their control,” said Mohamed, adding that online bots were creating hysteria “in order to divide us”.
Mohamed asserted that undocumented foreign nationals are exploited as a readily available underclass of cheap labor by large corporations seeking to bypass South Africa’s labor laws, often performing hazardous work for inadequate wages.
Sunrise Ikanga, a 24-year-old refugee, recounted how the resurgence of xenophobic tensions in South Africa triggered her childhood trauma from 2008. At six years old, her family’s neighbors in Joe Slovo, Milnerton, had pounded on their door, ordering them to depart.
“When I came here [to South Africa], it was around 2008, that’s also when the xenophobic attacks happened, and I had to experience that as a six-year-old with my own eyes – how they were beating people, breaking into people’s houses. They [the perpetrators] would mostly target township areas, and I also remember that my dad was beaten up because they asked him if he was South African, and he confirmed he wasn’t,” said Ikanga.
Ikanga stated that her refugee status prevented her from applying to public universities in South Africa, necessitating her enrollment in a private institution instead.
Participants at the gathering also advised undocumented foreign nationals to formalize their documents before more stringent regulations concerning refugees and asylum seekers are enacted.
