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.