What are we, when Cape Talk Radio, the radio station that professes to talk about current events that effect Cape Town people, refused to talk about the Xenophobia attacks within our community when they first erupted, for fear of retaliation? Retaliation by whom? Who can silence a radio station? And morally how could they condone these attacks with their silence at a time when they needed to speak out against it the most - right in the very beginning.
(This is according to a weekend newpaper report involving Sam Pearce. Jeff Ayliffe, a paraglider pilot who works at Cape Talk reporting on Weekend Outdoor Events refuted Sam Pearces claim, saying he read the same news article claim, but that news teams were sent out immediately the violence erupted in Cape Town. I asked if the news collected went on air and said he did not know. He is checking up on this to find out what happened. I did see Cape Talk at Parliament today.) It is time to stop this anti-foreigner violence and sentiment now - and that is why I joined the march. I will not be next. I will not stand by and wait my turn to be raped, killed and my land taken from me without resistance. And most of all, I will not stand by and do nothing thereby helping to create a tragic future for my nieces and nephew to inherit.
The meeting for the march was scheduled for 10am on Monday morning in Keisergracht Road near the Cape Technikon. I tried to get a group of Malawians from Hout Bay to join me, but none wanted to come to the march. They said they were afraid. I was hurt and angry that they would not stand up for themselves and went alone, arriving just before 11am. I thought that seeing as I was late, I would see a big crowd, but the assembly was embarrassingly small. The biggest group of people were the Somalis and I joked with fellow volunteers I recognised, that we were almost outnumbered by the strong police presence. Slowly more people trickled in, the most exciting was the Treatment Action Campaign Khayaletsha group of, I think Xhosa's, who arrived in full voice to show their support for the foreigner nationals. The foreigners looked on a little bemused at the sight of black South Africans joining them, but my eyes pricked with emotion hearing the beauty of their powerful voices and the show of solidarity from this tiny group of women in yellow shirts. Slowly the marchers started to line up and prepare for the walk to Parliament, the Somalis banding together out front behind the pick-ups/bakkies with speakers. Being new to this I was sitting out of harms way up on top of my Toyota Fortuna parked next to the road facing out. If things got ugly I wanted as few obstacles between me and my 4x4 and the road. The beginning of the march and in fact through out the march to parliament everyone was well behaved. I think one of the sad facts about this march is that because there were so many people from different countries and cultures taking part, it did not have one voice. I would have loved to hear a powerful united voice as people walked through the city. Instead, it was fragmented, brave, but lost. A people adrift, without a clear idea of what they wanted and where they were going. Which is exactly what they are. People set adrift in a sea of hostility. We arrived at parliament and I almost burst out laughing whilst being taken aback with mild alarm at the same time. There was General Louis Botha, the Warrior/Statesman hero from my childhood history days, sitting proudly on his horse, guarding the gates of parliament and below him was a small line of police standing with legs astride facing the oncoming marchers. Not sure why I felt like laughing? Maybe I was nervous. This is a common embarrassing reaction of mine. Maybe I imagined a momentary split in time and we really were being held at bay by this soldier from the past. Perhaps the crowd felt it too because they stopped a good twenty feet in front of the statue. Officials did their speech thing, a child's high pitched voice took to the microphone and expressed herself - Fatima just wanted to go back to school, people called for UN intervention, a man in a white jersey gave an impassioned speech for peace and tolerance and then it all kind of got a bit loose and directionless. Somehow I missed the handing over of the petition/demands to the government official, but maybe that happened when the crowd suddenly rushed the police.
The crowd had been relatively quiet and I was thinking that the march was over and I should perhaps start walking back to my car when suddenly the crowd in the front broke through the marshal's human barrier and ran at the police cordon tape - the first demarcated line of 'Don't you dare cross this tape'. I sidestepped the oncoming crowd and stepped behind a conveniently placed police car. But then things started to get really tense and the press of people went through that 'Don't you dare cross this tape' and pushed onto the second 'This is your last warning' tape. I saw all that we had set out to achieve - a peaceful march of protest against violence - at risk of erupting into violence. I could not stand by and do nothing. Quietly and as respectfully and gently as I could I asked people to step back behind the first tape. I was very careful not to grab anyone or use force. The police were agitated and commanding the crowd to step back. I tried not to look at the police for fear of seeing guns and feeling the dreaded rubber bullets as they reacted to the provocation. Urgently I quietly implored people to move back, gently touching them with my right hand on their chests where their hearts were beating and trying to get them to look me in the eyes and to hear me. Over and over I repeated we were here to march in peace. We are not the criminals. Don't make the police fire rubber bullets and destroy our march against violence. Don't be the one who ruins everything. We are here to march for peace. And so on. In ones and twos we convinced people to move back behiind the tape, but there was still a fearful noise and in the far end where Zackie Achmet the spokesperson for TAC disappeared, there was a terrible commotion and suddenly there was clatter of hard edge noises and police sprouted riot shields on their arms and were pushing people back with them, warning them to step back. Nervous as all hell, but trying not to show it, not knowing at what point the police would resort to stronger actions, I and others continued to encourage people to calm down and to step back. Next moment there was a flurry of furious energy in the form of a tiny Somali woman in traditional dress, who erupted from the most antagonistic of the crowd, shouting and shoving men back simultaneously with hard pushes using both hands and all the force her tiny body could muster. They fell back before her assault as she half ran down the front line of the crowd creating a few metres between the police and the crowd. This tiny dynamo changed the course of the march and brought it back to reason.
Spurred on by her exhortations for a peaceful protest, people turned their attentions to those who were making trouble and one group even manhandled a young man who was refusing to step away from the police cordone; a young man who was wearing the TAC white shirt and orange marshal bib, who had been entrusted with keeping the peace but instead, like so many of our young people, became an instigator of violence. The crowd removed his shirt and his bib and when he defiantly grabbed it and threw it on the floor, they picked it up and gave it to me - and that is how I became a marshal for an hour. There were times when I swear these people were incited. When one high profile TAC or ALP member later said to me that it was good that the crowd showed their anger, I was taken aback. Was I being naive again thinking that this was supposed to have been a peace march and not a militant show of anger and force? Who incited that group to rush the police? I know and understand that the media wants something exciting to film, photograph and write about. Every time there was a flare up of anger and energy, the cameras came up and the film started rolling. When it was peaceful the media became bored and restless. The protesters know this and so they perform for camera. For the most part I did not feel endangered by the angry protestors because not once did they direct their anger at me. One man did hold a porcupine quill in his hand at shoulder height and made me nervous, but only because I knew it could be a very effective weapon, especially if he went for my eye or ear. In my home town the Zulus use sharpened bicycle spokes with deadly effect, puncturing deep into the body. But I looked at him and at his quill and back into his eyes, making him aware that I knew he had a weapon in his hand and he melted into the crowd. Lathiefa, a strongly built Moslem lady volunteer who worked with me at Canterbury Street distribution depot did get hurt and trampled in the scuffles. I only saw her afterwards in a van into which she was bundled, bruised and frightened. I am glad I did not see it happen. I may have lost my cool seeing someone I knew getting hurt by the very people she had been helping this past week and that may have had very, very bad consequences. You have got to keep your head whilst those around you are losing theirs otherwise you are no different from them and all reason is lost.
Eventually the police called 'Times Up' and ordered us to disperse, pushing people back with their shields. Here journalists actually aggravated the situation. One journalist was interviewing a group of refugees/foreigners and the police wanted them to move away and go elsewhere. The refugees wanted their say, they wanted someone to listen to them and the journalist kept telling the police to wait, he was busy. Wrong. You do not tell the South African police to wait whilst you interview when they want the crowd to disperse. The police were very insistent that he continue with his interview further down the street and the situation simmered for awhile as the police bumped the crowd with their shields over the road. Did we achieve anything? I am not sure. There certainly was not enough people to make a big impact - only a few hundred. There was not one voice, one song, one demand which I think would have made a stronger impact than the fragmented lost souls we had with us that day. But in essence the march did reflect their plight. They need help. They are shell shocked. Their lives have been torn apart and they are adrift with an uncertain future in a country where black South Africans profess to hate all black foreigners and have show themselves will to kill foreigners. What if that was you and me in another country?
They asked me - where is Mbeki? Why is he not here? I told them what I thought was the truth - Mbeki is not here because we are not important enough for him to be here.
They asked - who will help us? I said that sometimes we must help ourselves.
They said - We want to leave this country. It is not safe for us to be in South Africa. I asked them where in Africa is it safe? DRC? Rwanda? Burundi? Zimbabwe? Somalia? Where in Africa is there peace?
I told them that South Africa was at the very bottom of Africa and that there was only sea behind us. We must make a stand. We must find a way to live in peace.
They said we want to go away from Africa. I agreed and confesses that I wanted to go to Australia, but Australia would not have me.
One impassioned young man said he wanted to go back to Somalia. I asked him if he thought it was safer in Somalia? He said yes. I asked him how old he was. He said 17. I asked him when last he was in Somalia. He said he was born in Mogadishu 17 years ago.
During the height of the tense moments a very dark and wild African kept shouting in my face that it was better that he die here and now rather than like a dog in the township. I tried to calm him down. I told him I did not want to die today. That I did not want to feel the police's rubber bullets on my back. That this was a march for peace, not violence. It took a long time to get through to him, as he was in full flight. Fortunately the others were only impassioned on the surface and almost without exception, they could be reasoned with and not once did they show me disrespect or try to touch or harm me in any way.
I am sad for them. I am sad for us.
I am also proud they walked the streets of Cape Town. Someone has to remind us that we are all human beings and to treat one another and ourselves with respect, no matter how desperate the situation. If only our Government would do the same.... |
Refugee Aid Worker