Academic Nirvana

Today I died and went to university heaven.  The University of Cape Town (UCT), set on at the foot of Table Mountain, must be the most stunning university in the world.  It’s in keeping with the rest of Cape Town, which is spectacular, but to me the combination of university and mountains is almost swoon-inducing!

On my first visit to South Africa, in January this year, someone told me that Cape Town is ‘not really Africa’.  I can see why.  To be blunt, it is much ‘whiter’ than Johannesburg, and therefore probably the rest of Africa.  Though as well as there being more (or at least more visible) white South Africans in central Cape Town, there are also many more Indians, Muslims and Asians.  The free city magazine I read over my coffee this morning proclaims Cape Town as ‘one of the most multicultural cities in the world’.

Cape Town is also far more touristy than Jo’burg.  The thick British accent ordering Butter Chicken at the table next to me one evening (I visited the same Indian restaurant in Cape Town every night) would never be heard in Jo’burg, at least not in the city.  And the daily market in the Green Market Square, with leopard print handbags and beaded necklaces, is evidently not directed at locals. 

But the foreigners here are not all tourists.  The owner of the old art deco building that my hotel (The Glam – I am staying in the Sophia Loren room) is Irish – he spends half his year in Cape Town and half in Ireland.  The taxi drivers I spoke with – to and from the university and airport – were almost all from Zimbabwe.  They all want to return, but only when the country is more stable and the economy improves.  (The only source of hope is Mugabe’s frequent visits to a hospital in Singapore – which have apparently sent the Zimbabwe’s national airline broke and fed local rumours that he has prostate cancer.)

It seems to me that the blend of nationalities and cultures in Cape Town is part of modern South Africa, in somewhat the same way that Shanghai – the Paris of the East – is part of modern China.  In fact, I am sometimes been struck by the similarities between the two countries.  Both rapidly developing and having undergone (relatively) recent major political change, they are places where the urban landscape changes daily and the middle class is booming.  Both are undoubtedly lands of opportunity, but not for everyone – in both, the gap between rich and poor is growing.  And as in China, South African people are on the move.  I read recently that the biggest migration in South Africa does not originate outside the country, but from within, as rural populations increasingly come to cities like Cape Town to try their luck. 

But frankly, it’s easy to see why the whole world would want to be in Cape Town.  It’s spectacular.  It’s also safer than it’s northern counterpart.  I visit my local Indian restaurant in the evening, and while I don’t exactly wander the streets after dark, it’s a pleasant novelty to stroll a block back to my hotel after dinner.  And the cafes are great.  The Haas Coffee Collective – a café/studio in Bo Kaap, the original Malay settlement on the side of the mountain – does easily the best soy latte I’ve had in South Africa.  

This visit to Cape Town was work-focussed.  I met with a local barrister, who is the former director of UCT’s Refugee Law Clinic and legal advisor to the Minister for Human Affairs, and with the current Clinic director and one of their senior attorneys.  I also had lunch on the waterfront with a current government official – the first who has agreed to speak to me, though sadly not ‘on the record’.  Somewhat hilariously, this same official phoned the lawyer I met at the UCT Clinic while I was in her office, to ask if she had any guidelines on the African refugee definition, the topic of our meeting. 

So for now, my views of the mountains and coastline have been mainly in passing, between the airport and hotel, hotel and interview appointments.  But I’ll be back in Cape Town at the end of next week with Richard, and I’m saving my hike up Table Mountain, train trip along the coast and winelands tour for then!  So more pictures will follow, but here’s a few to give you the general idea…

How could you not want to learn here?

View from the Middle Campus

Law Building and home to the UCT Refugee Law Clinic

Law Building

Inside the Law Building

All Africa House

Cape Town is much greener than Jo'burg right now.  Cape Town gets its
rain in winter, while Jo'burg gets it in summer

Visiting the United Nations

Last week I made my first ever visit to the United Nations.  Sadly, it was nothing like the picture above.  In fact, the nice driver from the hotel I stayed at in Pretoria didn’t even know which building it was.  And while we sat in the unmoving traffic and debated it, I decided I probably had a better chance on my own, so I jumped out of the van and walked.

My appointment was with a representative from UNHCR – the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  The impression I had thus far been given of UNHCR in South Africa was one of an organisation somewhat out of touch with the plight of refugees on the ground.  It was apparently not until last year that they even admitted refugees to their offices, and even then only on Mondays.  They rather infamously stated that Zimbabweans fleeing the 2008 Operation Murambatsvina – when Mugabe systematically demolished slums and informal settlement in major cities, forcing people from their homes and livelihoods – were not refugees, a position hard to understand from a government, let alone an organisation whose mandate is refugee protection.  An NGO worker I interviewed recently told me that the South African UNHCR office has little respect from refugees, and even less from NGOs.

The sign above the security desk at the entrance to the UN building stipulated no cameras or guns and I could see three separate screening points.  But when I approached one of the guards to explain the purpose of my visit, he pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket with my name on it.  On the one hand this seemed a rather informal admittance procedure.  But it was followed by airport style luggage screening, a frisk, and two more locked doors.  I was followed by the guard through each one, and then accompanied all the way to the 8th floor and the office of the woman I was to meet.  It wasn’t hard to see how refugees or asylum seekers might view this as a rather inhospitable welcome (if they even got past first base).

In fact, my meeting went really well.  UNHCR Pretoria is a regional office – it covers all of Southern Africa, not just South Africa itself.  (I can’t help wondering whether a misunderstanding of this role accounts in part for their poor record with some NGOs.)  The representative in Pretoria provided me with amazing insight into how refugee status determination works in other countries in the region, including Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  Unlike South Africa, which has a specialised and fairly sophisticated refugee status decision-making process (in theory at least), in all other Southern African countries decisions about refugee status are made by inter-Ministerial committees, in which various governmental Ministers – usually from Departments such as Foreign Affairs and Security – hold hearings where they sit around a table and consider applications one by one.  Refugee applicants can attend these group hearings and are occasionally asked questions.  In most cases a decision is made on the spot.  It some, the decision is ‘deferred’.  This is usually because of the Committee’s concerns about potential security threats, but in practice these deferrals are more or less indefinite, so it is hard to see precisely what security they offer.

I found it hard to understand how one Committee could possibly get through all the refugee applications, until I learned that the number of asylum applications per year in each of these countries is only around 5,000.  That is less than Australia.  And of these applications, a huge number are abandoned, as people move on, usually to South Africa, in search of family, friends and better opportunities.

In some ways, these numbers are surprising, given that the political environment for refugees in places like Malawi, Mozambique and Botswana – which are far more inclined to approve asylum applications and extend the traditional African hospitality to refugees – seems far preferable to that in South Africa, renowned instead for xenophobic violence and unrelenting harassment of foreigners by police.  But South Africa was and is seen as the land of opportunity – to work, to start a business and, in some cases, to continue the quest for a new life further afield, in North America, Europe or even Australia.   

What is most interesting and exciting to me in my meeting at UNHCR is their genuine interest in my research into the expanded African refugee definition.  Governments in the region continually request more information from UNHCR on the definition’s scope, expressing their frustration that there is so little to given them guidance on its meaning.  UNHCR itself has not developed any such guidance, in part because the African Refugee Convention, unlike the international 1951 Refugee Convention, does not give them clear authority to do so.  And in fact, I later read that their reluctance to declare Zimbabweans as refugees under the expanded definition was largely due to a ‘lack of doctrinal clarity on the definition’s scope’.

While I hardly expect Southern African Ministers to be queueing up for a copy of my thesis, I have always hoped that my work will provide a tool for UNHCR, lawyers and even refugees themselves to advocate for the protection to which they are entitled.  My meeting with UNHCR is encouraging, because it suggests that those to whom the tool is directed might be actually willing to listen.

I left my meeting feeling very positive and with renewed faith in the research I am doing.  Not only that, but the UNHCR representative I met with even offered to put forward a research request to the relevant government on my behalf, should I choose to visit one of the countries where they work!  Now all I need to do is choose – I’ve heard amazing things about the Kalahari in Botswana, and Victoria Falls in Zambia sounds fabulous.  But Malawi sounds interesting too, so does Mozambique. 

Down to business

This week I have eschewed markets and walking tours for what I really came here to do – research.  Having never done genuine ‘field research’ before, I have been surprised at just how daunting the prospect of conducting interviews can be.  Last week I found myself emailing my supervisor just to check whether she really though people would be ok with being recorded.  (The answer was yes – in fact the only person who has a problem with it is me, and that’s more a technological issue.)

In my first week in Jo’burg I set about dispersing a bunch of emails to prospective interviewees – some of whom I met on my last visit here and some I didn’t – politely (re)introducing myself and asking whether maybe, perhaps they might be able to spare a few moments to chat to me about their experiences with the African refugee definition in practice.  In my second week, having received only two replies, I got on the phone. Within a day I had lined up interviews with two refugee lawyers, an academic, a High Court judge, the former Head of the Refugee Appeal Board and a representative from UNHCR.

I felt relief that, before I left, I had managed to convince the University Ethics Committee that contacting people by phone to request interviews was the modus operandi in Africa.  The Committee, whose approval I need for all PhD-related research, had resisted this.  Apparently telephoning people could be seen as ‘coercive’ and so email or mail contact is the preferred means of contact.  I explained, a few times, that I had been told by other researchers that it just doesn’t work like that in Africa – and indeed it doesn’t.  Individuals who had basically ignored my email were only too happy to receive my phone call, more than ready to be interviewed and very happy to pass over telephone numbers of other people they thought I should speak to.

Perhaps my most entertaining phone call was to a representative of the South African Department of Home Affairs.  As mentioned in a previous post, DHA is pretty well a closed shop and apparently has an official policy of not talking to researchers.  Lawyers, NGOs and academics alike are scathing of the Department’s policies and practices, to the extent that many see no hope at all for refugee protection in the country.  So in a way I felt quite lucky to have obtained the name and cell number of a fairly senior member of the Department’s policy and strategy team, and to have caught him in an airport lounge before boarding his flight.  I didn’t exactly expect him to grant me an interview, and he certainly didn’t.  But he did treat me to a ten minute monologue on the scourge of so-called ‘economic refugees’ – who see South Africa as a ‘soft target’ and are apparently hated by all South African – before pronouncing that he ‘couldn’t talk about it’ and that he had to board his flight because he is ‘very busy flying about all over the place’.  It was an illuminating monologue and my pen went furiously, trying to capture all he said.  I can’t really use it for the PhD – he hasn’t signed the ‘consent form’ required by the university – but it was both a fascinating and highly disturbing insight in the mindset of those who determine refugee protection policies in this country.

My proper interviews have all been great.  In fact, I am amazed at how generous people are with their time and how candid with their views.  Having worked in several NGOs myself I know how preciously limited time can be – and research is so often the least pressing of all the demands.   So I am extremely grateful for the time people have given me.  And full of hope that the research I am doing, and the results it generates, will in turn be of benefit to refugee lawyers and advocates in their work.

As I have explained to all my interviewees, this research is not only for the sake of my PhD thesis, though of course that will be its chief destination.  It is my real hope that what I am doing here will ultimately improve protection for refugees in practice, by providing guidance to refugee status decision-makers and a tool for refugee advocates.  I am still staggered at the almost complete lack of knowledge that exists here in relation to Africa’s expanded refugee definition, despite the extensive praise that is heaped upon it elsewhere.  This lack of knowledge is certainly not the only thing undermining refugee protection, at least in South Africa, but remedying it is one small, necessary step in ensuring that people at risk of serious and genuine harm are not returned to its path.

Soweto

Yesterday I made my first trip to Soweto.  A large region to the south west of the Jo’burg CBD (Soweto is an English shortening of South West Townships), Soweto is a vast collection of suburbs bordering the city’s gold mining belt.  To get there from my home in Braamfontein you drive first through the maze of city streets and alleys, then between the enormous gold mine dumps that dominate the southern horizon, and finally past the garish Good Reef City casino and theme park and you’re there.  

It is hard to describe Soweto because it covers such an enormous area and each part of it is so different.  Visitors to South Africa, like myself, often imagine it to be like the slums of Delhi or Nairobi, and certainly some of the informal settlements in Soweto are not dissimilar – collections of tin shelters with no electricity, sewerage or running water – but much of it looks like the suburbs elsewhere in the city.  While it certainly isn’t Sandton (to the north of the city and apparently the richest square mile in Africa) there are now people in Soweto who are doing very well for themselves.  As our guide Tania explains, those who make it good in Soweto don’t usually move, they just build a bigger house – usually on top of the one they already have. 

Soweto is significant as the home of a large proportion of the Jo’burg population, as well as the focal point for much of the struggle against apartheid.  Places such as Klipsburg, Orlando West and Vilakazi Street will ring in the minds of South Africans, and many others, for a long time yet.  Soweto was the place to which many black communities were forcibly removed when their residence in designated ‘white areas’ was deemed no longer acceptable.  Apart from housing, nothing else existed in Soweto.  There were no shops, no services, no public spaces – nothing that could make Soweto a functioning, self-sustainable community.  There was no electricity, but for the enormous military strength spotlights that still stand over every second block and which kept Soweto in almost permanent daylight.  Much of the industry which was formerly in the east of the city was moved to the south, because that’s where the workers now lived. 

Perhaps most notoriously Soweto was the site of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, which is now commemorated annually with a national holiday on June 16.  When police opened fire on protesting school children, marching in opposition to the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 which mandated that all education be in English and Afrikaans, the ensuing riots resulted in many hundreds of deaths and is sometimes marked as a turning point in the attitudes of many white South Africans to the apartheid regime.  Tania is incredulous: ‘Why was it not until police started shooting children that people started to think maybe something was wrong?’  And still, it would be almost another 20 years before the apartheid regime was finally dismantled. 

But there is much to celebrate in Soweto too.  Freedom Square in Kliptown is where the Congress of the People famously, and in spite of intense police pressure and multiple arrests, signed the Freedom Charter – a document demanding equal rights and governance by the people and the basis of the country’s subsequent Constitution.  Vilakazi Street was the home of both Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.  Tutu still lives there, his home surrounded by a simple grey wall at the end of the street, and Mandela’s former residence has been turned in to a museum.  And the streets are becoming more and more colourful, owing to some creative graffiti artists, public art initiatives and the fact that sign writing, a lost art in many big cities, continues to thrive in Soweto. 

It would be a mistake to see these developments as an indication that there is not a lot of work still to be done.  As we drive past a small informal settlement, squeezed in between the new apartment buildings, I could not help but remember the ferocious storms of a few nights ago and wonder whether the people living there got even a moment’s sleep at all.  And on our return to the city we pass the Baragwanath Hospital, apparently the third largest hospital in the world and with the largest burns and trauma departments in Africa.  Doctors from the UK and Europe come here to learn, because in one night at ‘Bara’ they see more stab and gunshot wounds as they are likely to see in a year at home. 

Nevertheless, there can be no question that Soweto today is an infinite improvement on Soweto 20 years ago.  And despite its troubles it is quite a relaxing place to be.  People drive just a little more slowly, they smile a bit more and they wave to us as we drive or walk past.

The road to Soweto - paved by gold mine dumps

The sculpture at the entrance to Vilakazi St spells out the name in sign language

Graffiti art near Vilakazi St

A wire sculpture depicting the confrontation between protesting
students and police that triggered the Soweto Uprising

Protest seems still to be a part of the Sowetan culture.  In the few hours I was there I saw
separate protests against police corruption, the current Secrecy Bill (which proposes to
make all government information classified) and the violence at Marikana mines.

Hungry?  Get your fix at the General Dealer

Haircut - Soweto style

Informal settlements such as this exist in Soweto and other parts of Johannesburg.  The
government has vowed to 'eradicate' them, but others argue that this will never happen and the
 government should instead invest in infrastructure to support them and make them safer.

One of the military grade surveillance lights that kept Soweto in constant daylight during the
Apartheid regime and before electricity was installed in neighbourhoods 

RDP Housing - built as part of the ANC's Reconstruction and Development Program, aimed at
addressing the socioeconomic problems that resulted from the struggle against Apartheid.

Graffiti at the now defunct Orlando Power Station

Owing to the expense of billboard advertising in Soweto, sign writing is the most common form of
advertising in the district.  Renting out a wall is a common way for Sowetans to earn extra income
and the practice is keeping the art of sign writing, now pretty rare elsewhere, alive in Soweto.

The very new (and very vibrant!) Soweto Theatre