Good Samaritans come to aid of asylum seekers

A group of women, men and their children emerge from the classrooms with beaming smiles and running towards the two bakkies that had just parked in the yard of the abandoned school building.

“We didn’t think you’d come because of the bad and rainy weather,” one woman shouted as she approached Sophie Williams, one of the drivers. Williams is from Mountains and Valleys Ministries, a church that has been donating essential supplies to 26 families who have occupied a school building in Bronkhorstspruit, a town just 50km outside of Pretoria. 

The families are some of the more than 200 asylum that had built makeshift structures outside the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHRC) offices in Tshwane before the court ordered for their eviction last month. The court ordered them to be bussed to the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Krugersdorp where they would be housed for six months. Three weeks ago, the police raided the structures on the UNHRC offices and took a large group to Lindela while others were arrested for resisting eviction. Others ran to various places around the capital. 

At least seven families settled at the old and abandoned farm school building in Bronkhorstspruit. The building had been deserted for more than seven years. The school has two buildings, one for four classrooms and the other is for toilets and it's fenced off.

The families share the four classrooms and a tent which is just outside the classrooms. The four classrooms are all bare and with no walls or curtains for privacy. They use buckets to bath in the toilets and they get water from the nearby farm as the toilets do not have running water. 

Mattresses are scattered on the floors and other belongings such as clothing stuffed in plastic bags. The classrooms aren’t electrified and the families use candles and torches for lighting. They cook on firewood on slab of concrete, using tins. 

Mountains and Valleys Ministries has been helping the families with food and supplies donations since they moved into the school last month. They also facilitate meetings between the refugees and the human rights lawyers. 

Theresa Walu escaped her war-torn home country, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2009 at the age of 17 with her two children. Without a passport, she came to SA in the back of the truck passing Zambia and Zimbabwean borders before she landed at Joburg’s Park Station.

So horrific and long was the 2,500km trip that Walu was not allowed to exit the truck during the day because her transporter did not want her to be seen. “I can’t remember how many days we travelled for... I was tired of moving around and I wanted to stay in one place without fearing for my life,” Walu explained her reasons for coming to SA. 

On arriving in SA, Walu struggled to find people who spoke her language, French, and who would help her explain her story to home affairs. At some stage, she and her children were housed at a church. She met a man who would later become her husband and he helped her apply for asylum. But this process was delayed and the two got married and started a car-dealership business in Joburg.

However, their dreams were shuttered in 2019 when sporadic xenophobia attacks spread around the country. Their business was burnt to the ground. 

She and her husband went to UNHCR offices to seek help but were surprised to see other immigrants who were in the same situation. “The officials at the UNHRC told us to join the queue of other asylum seekers and that’s when we started living on the UNHRC pavement,” she explained.

They lived on the pavement until the court ordered them to vacate the area. She said an organisation, Batho Pele, took them to the school in Bronkhorspruit. “Although this is not an ideal place for us to live, it's better than Lindela. It's safer and it's far away from people who want to hurt us. At first, not all of us wanted to move into this school but my husband and I accepted it,” said Walu.  

Johnny Lowoso, also from DRC, arrived in SA through the airport cargo in Durban. After making a life for himself in the country, Lowoso was among refugees who were arrested when they tried to seek refuge on UNHRC property in 2019. He spent two years in jail. 

“All we have ever wanted was safety and I don’t understand how seeking for safety can be such a crime in this country. We have been traumatised here more than we have where we come from,” Johnny expressed sadly. 

Williams said she had been helping refugees ever since she saw their situation on the news a few weeks ago.

“I couldn’t understand why no one would want to help these people. It was really a sad scene to watch and I didn’t want to continue watching knowing very well that I could help them. 

“This place is not the best and the process of getting here is very hard due to the constant weather that affects the road, but it’s something we can work with. There’s no electricity and before the generator, there was no water at all. But we managed to get a generator that we now use to pump water for the people. It’s certainly better than before and better than nothing.”

Sister Martha from Caritas Internationalis said that with the Catholic Church, they try to come every week to provide the group with food and other necessities.