Six refugees beaten in xenophobic attack

• On 14 July, six refugees were attacked and beaten with sticks in Durban.
• They were working in salons around Warwick Street Market, when they were assaulted by about a dozen people carrying sticks.
• Of the six who were beaten, two were admitted to hospital.

On Tuesday afternoon, six refugees, who were working in salons at Warwick Street Market, Durban, were attacked by men carrying sticks. The attackers told them they should have left the country by now.

Raphael Bahebwa, president of the Congolese Solidarity Campaign, said all six had been staying with other refugees camped outside the Home Affairs offices on Che Guevara Road.

According to Bahebwa, four of them managed to escape back to the camp with minor injuries, while two were admitted to hospital.

Samuel Nyandwi, a documented asylum seeker from Burundi has been in South Africa for 24 years. Speaking from his bed in Victoria Mxenge Hospital, he told GroundUp he had begged them to stop beating him.

Nyandwi said he was cutting hair when he saw a man, being chased by about a dozen people with sticks.

“We had been warned not to come back to the market by the same people the day before,” said Nyandwi.

The group did not ask for his documents, which he had with him at the time.

“They asked my name, and then they started beating me,” he said.

Nyandwi tried to escape into a salon in a nearby shopping centre, but the mob followed. One tried to drag him outside, threatening to throw him from the first floor. Women in the salon told the assailant to stop beating him.

Nyandwi said he started to lose consciousness. “I heard things, but I was losing control.”

His recollections after that are hazy. He recalled the floor of the salon was covered in his blood.

The women inside called the police repeatedly over the next hour. Someone tried to get an ambulance.

Nyandwi somehow managed to get back to the barber where he worked and found his phone. He reached his uncle who took him to hospital.

Nyandwi said he had been attacked in the same place in February and had stayed away. He returned to cutting hair on Monday, because he needed to buy food, pay his two children’s school fees and his rent. He had received an eviction notice for failure to pay rent.

As he did not feel safe at his apartment, he and his family have been camping outside Home Affairs.

Rureza Rubazano from the DRC, escaped with minor injuries. He said the vigilantes had been watching the immigrant barbers since they returned to work.

“We told them we had papers, but they didn’t care.”

The assaulted refugees intend to open a case with the police after those hospitalised are discharged.

It has been almost eight weeks that refugees have been camping in the open without facilities at the Home Affairs centre on Che Guevara Street.

On Thursday morning, representatives from the camp held a media briefing on “the humanitarian crisis facing both documented refugees and migrants in South Africa”.

Yeshelen Govender from Siyafana Sonke stated at the briefing: “When you have more than 400, and approaching 500 people, living on the pavements without any state support, it’s our position that there is a failure to carry on the constitutional mandate that the state holds, which is to ensure safety and security of all those who live within the borders of our country.”

Rureza Rubazano, one of the refugees who was attacked, with the cut on his forehead from being hit with a stick. In the background is the Home Affairs camp.

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