‘Home’ No More: African Migrants Raised in South Africa Face Renewed Xenophobic Fury

By Tim Cocks

DURBAN, South Africa, June 15 (Reuters) — When Princess Adjei opened her hair salon in downtown Durban last November, she had lived in South Africa since moving from Ghana as a toddler. She had never known another home. She attended local schools, built a circle of South African friends, and spoke fluent Zulu, the lingua franca of this eastern port city. It rarely crossed her mind that she might be seen as an outsider.

That changed on May 18, when demonstrators at an anti-migrant protest broke into her salon and looted it. Suddenly, even people she had considered friends began telling her to go “home” — to a country she has visited only once in her life.

Adjei is among scores of victims in a wave of attacks targeting African foreign nationals accused by an anti-immigration movement of being in South Africa illegally. Many of those targeted, however, hold legal documents and have deep roots in the country — some have spent more than two decades here.

“They took everything,” Adjei said, surveying the wreckage of her first-floor shop, now littered with smashed mirrors and broken chairs. “Those were hair pieces I was selling here. There were acrylic nails, six hair dryers, a range of shampoos. All gone.”

Migrants sleep on streets after attacks

Adjei said she had invested 50,000 rand (more than $3,000) to renovate the salon in February. Now she has moved out of her central Durban apartment. “Without the salon … I don’t have money for rent,” she told Reuters, showing a blanket where she and her 14-year-old son now sleep alongside about 200 other migrants on the street.

The group has set up camp outside the government’s Department of Home Affairs office, hoping officials there can confirm their residency status. Other Africans have fled towns and cities, taking refuge on mountains and rough ground amid violence that has killed at least five people and triggered a diplomatic rift with other nations on the continent.

Reuters interviewed a dozen migrants in Durban, four of whom have lived in South Africa since childhood. Many have built careers and families here, only to be told they no longer belong.

March and March denies xenophobia

March and March, the organization that began the protests last month, denies accusations of xenophobia. “Xenophobia (applies) … to those people who come to a country illegally and make people from that country feel uncomfortable,” Jacinta Ngobese, the group’s founder, told Reuters in an interview in Durban. She said her movement had spared migrants violence by redirecting South Africans’ anger toward the government. Still, the group’s protests typically coincide with violence, including the looting of foreign shops and the destruction of homes. “We are not responsible for the violence,” Ngobese said. “If we were violent, we would have been arrested.”

Migrants say police chased them away

Some arrests were made after protesters killed five Mozambicans last month and at other incidents, but police responses remain rare. After fleeing their homes during the Durban protests, around 200 migrants camped outside the central police station. Four interviewed by Reuters, including Adjei, said police first escorted them to a homeless shelter, then to a market warehouse — but people already there refused to let them in. The following day, police told them to leave, later firing rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas, the four migrants and some local media reported.

“They told us to look for another shelter,” said Congolese refugee Tchomba Kasongo, limping and showing a bullet scar on his leg. Now the migrants live in fear of a June 30 deadline that protesters have given all “illegal” migrants to leave.

Durban police spokesperson Booysie Zungu denied the allegations. “We never tear gassed anyone, we never fired on anyone,” he told Reuters. When told about the attack on Adjei’s salon and other anti-migrant violence, he said, “We don’t have cases of that nature reported. They must open a case.” A spokesperson for Durban’s mayor declined to comment.

Old friends turn on migrants

When Adjei returned to her apartment after seeing her salon in tatters, she met a South African neighbor she had regarded as a friend. They had often sat in the corridor chatting or sharing tea, but now he was scowling at her and asking when she was leaving. It was the third time she had experienced the xenophobia that periodically convulses South Africa. The first was when she was bullied in school during protests in 2008 by classmates who had previously shown no interest in her nationality.

Some South African friends have remained supportive. After the latest protests, Congolese refugee Wivene Bahati, 25, also sleeping on the curb near Adjei, said an old classmate had reached out. “She felt bad. She asked me, ‘Is everything ok?’” said Bahati, who has been in South Africa since 2011.

Analysts say migrants are often seen as competition for jobs and public services, making them convenient scapegoats when shortages arise or government services fail. Anti-migrant sentiment frequently increases around election time, as politicians stoke it for populist votes — South Africa has local elections due by November.

Thamsanqa Ntuli, the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, which includes Durban, rejects the notion that politics fuels xenophobia. Instead, he blames illegal migration. “We agree with the entire society when they say: ‘Government, you should have started to manage migration properly … a long time ago,’” he told Reuters.

($1 = 16.2213 rand)

(Reporting by Tim Cocks; Additional reporting by Rogan Ward in Durban; Editing by Andrew Heavens)