Several people were injured when tempers flared in a standoff with migrants camped at Durban’s Che Guevara Road, police and March and March members on Thursday.
About 400 documented refugees and asylum seekers, who fled their homes after violence, evictions and intimidation in the run-up to anti-migrant protests, have lived on the busy road outside the department of home affairs refugee office for about 15 weeks.
The displaced documented families, mainly from Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi and Rwanda, who live in the temporary, makeshift camp, have been living under difficult conditions with a few mobile toilets.
On Thursday the anti-migrant organisation March and March announced it would “clean up” Che Guevara Road, prompting a boosted police presence.
Representatives of Siyafana Sonke Action Campaign, a collective of 160 organisations against xenophobia and Afrophobia, were also present.
Tensions flared between the migrants and activists while police attempted to form a human shield between the two groups.
During heated exchanges, a March and March official was injured when a stone was allegedly thrown at his face and two others were injured in the commotion.
Police used teargas to quell the situation and arrested one person during the chaos.
When the commotion died down, anti-migrant protesters seized furniture, clothes and other items belonging to refugees from the pavement and threw them into the road.
They sang and beat items, saying they were rubbish that needed to be cleared.
Tensions rose again, and police had to use rubber bullets to disperse protesters.
Unlike thousands who sought refuge first in Sherwood Park when the intimidation and violence against documented and illegal migrants broke out in May ― and were then moved to the Durban Drive-In repatriation site and eventually sent to the Lindela repatriation centre ― no-one has offered the group outside the refugee centre proper accommodation.
Siyafana Sonke Action Campaign condemned the “clean-up” operation targeting the refugees.
It said: “Ironically, a road named after an icon of international solidarity is now the site of a vicious xenophobic campaign targeting African refugees.
“The call issued by March and March and personally amplified by Jacinta Ngobese Zuma, one of its prominent figureheads, is a thinly veiled incitement to inflict more trauma and violence against a vulnerable group of registered African refugees who have already endured months of displacement, deprivation and harassment.”
TimesLIVE
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