Scared but staying: migrants dig in as South Africa turns hostile

Ethiopian refugee Helana Wolde locked his home and watched on TV as thousands of angry demonstrators marched in cities and towns this week calling for foreigners like him to leave.

His wife and their three South African-born children were terrified, he said, in the shop in the Durban CBD where he sells coffee and lentils.

But after leaving Ethiopia 21 years ago to escape political persecution, he does not see going back as an option.

I make business here. I don’t know why they’re angry.

—  Ethiopian refugee Helana Wolde

While thousands of immigrants packed up and left South Africa before the June 30 protests, many more feel their best option is to stay, even though the country has turned hostile.

“I have no place, no property, no family in Ethiopia,” said Wolde, adding that his brothers there had been jailed. He reopened his shop, which, unlike others, wasn’t looted, the morning after the protest and was hoping for the best.

Though Tuesday’s nationwide marches were largely peaceful, there were several pockets of attacks on foreigners and looting of migrant-owned businesses.

“We’re all extra-scared,” Wolde said.

South Africa hosts more than 167,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, according to the UN — a small number compared with many African countries. Uganda has 1.8-million refugees, according to the UN refugee agency; Chad has 1.2-million and Kenya 850,000.

Foreigners are not taking jobs from South Africans. We are starting some small jobs here in South Africa. We are paying rent. If you want to open a shop, you must open a shop like us

—   Daniel Abide

The overall immigrant population in South Africa is about 3-million, or 4% of the total, and low by global standards.

The main group behind the protests, March and March, says it objects only to illegal immigration and is not xenophobic.

This economy belongs to our people and it has been hijacked

—  Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, March and March leader

But the vigilantes it has riled up often target foreigners indiscriminately, and their frequent demands that immigrants show their documents are themselves illegal — as the government has pointed out — as only police have the authority to ask for them.

Several protesters said that what really bothered them was seeing foreign-owned shops on their streets, while they were struggling to make a living.

“This economy belongs to our people, and it has been hijacked,” the group’s leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, a former radio presenter, said in a speech on Tuesday.

She has called for marches every Thursday until March and March’s demands, including mass deportation, are met.

A third of South Africans are unemployed, and frustration with overstretched public services and rampant crime has boiled over, though researchers say immigration is not to blame for these problems.

“Foreigners are not taking jobs from South Africans. We are starting some small jobs here in South Africa. We are paying rent,” said Daniel Abide, 33, whose small convenience shop in Clermont, a township near Durban, was looted on Tuesday night.

“If you want to open a shop, you must open a shop like us,” he said.

Abide came from Ethiopia a decade ago and has two shops, one of which was not targeted. He hopes to eventually reopen the other one, which was broken into and emptied by looters. He employs one South African in his small business.

Other shops that were looted in Clermont were run by people from Somalia and Pakistan, locals told Reuters.

Outside one, men were working to fix the broken doors before nightfall, when they were afraid looters might come back.

We’re all extra-scared.

—  Helana Wolde

Wolde keeps a laminated stack of documents, his refugee certificate, tax and bank statements, on hand to show anyone who questions his legal status.

Sometimes he has to show them two or three times a day to police or other people who come into his shop, which is on a bustling street with mostly Ethiopian businesses.

“Now business is no good,” Wolde said. “Everybody is scared to come here.”

He has soured on South Africa, but having already survived a shooting in 2008 and xenophobic looting in 2015 and 2021, he plans to stick it out anyway.

“I make business here. I don’t know why they’re angry.”

Reuters