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

Back at the Uni

Today I am celebrating being connected to the internet!  After ten days and countless phone calls and visits to computer shops - all of which yielded nil, except to learn that a Mac is a rare thing in Africa, even in Johannesburg - I stumbled upon some international wifi hotspot thingamy, started an account, loaded it up and away I go!  It is a huge relief, and somewhat disturbing to realise how paralysing it can feel to be disconnected from the world wide web.

In the meantime I have been cramming as much email and research as I can into time spent at the University.  It could have been much worse really - my supervisor here at Wits University, Jonathan, has been kind enough to let me use his 'academic office' (as opposed to the 'head of school office' he now inhabits) which is basically in the attic of the Law School.  It is a wonderful place to work.  Immersed in a sea of books - legal, historical and sociological texts grace every shelf, desk, chair and much of the floor - it is kind of office I aspire to have one day.  The Law School Building is separate to the Wits Law Clinic, where I was based on my last visit (see here), so it has been good to meet some new people in the corridors.  It also has a lovely staff room, with a balcony overlooking the gardens and a fabulous coffee machine.

It is an interesting time at the University, where the academic staff are on partial, but indefinite, strike over wages and research funding (read an article on the strike here).  A few single day strikes have failed to resolve the issues so, while teaching continues, academic staff university-wide are boycotting all non-teaching related meetings and work.  On the sofas of the Law School staff room I learned that there is a very real possibility that the stalemate could continue until next year.  The current Deputy Vice-Chancellor and his so-called 'Henchmen' have been voted out of their positions but remain in them until next May - with nothing to lose and everything to prove.

Nevertheless, the University is a very pleasant place to be.  The grounds are beautiful and much more secure than much of Jo'burg, so that you can quite happily sit on the grass in the sun without watching your back.  The staff are mostly very open and friendly.  Despite the massive inequality that exists in South Africa generally - last year South Africa took the place of Brazil as the most unequal society in the world - there is a certain solidarity that expresses itself at the University, at least on the surface.  In the Law School, for example, the Head of School greets the cleaning staff by name, something I suspect would be unlikely in most Australian universities.

The students, like students everywhere, have great energy and bring a lively feeling to the campus.  Last week I traipsed the length of the Uni to get my staff card, accompanied by Nice, who works as a casual administrator at the University while studying to be a fashion designer.  She explained to me that when she first left school she started a nursing course, because that's what her mother wanted her to do.  But after two years, she realised she hated it and decided to get out.  She tells me emphatically: 'You have to be true to yourself, you have to do what you love.  My heart was not in nursing, I had to get out before I killed someone.  Fashion in my heart, so that's what I must do.'  How could you disagree with that?

My temporary office/ library/attic retreat...

My staff card - not that I am 'staff' as such, but I gather
it's much easier to get this than a student card!

Strike notices - these are dotted around the campus.  There have been a few staff demonstrations
but, apart from that, these are really the only overt sign that anything is going on.

Back in the 'hood

There’s something quite satisfying about returning to a foreign place you have visited before.  You still get the thrill and excitement of travel – of a different landscape, different sounds, languages, food, road rules. But you also get the smug feeling of not being a total outsider and the comfort of recognition.  Ah yes, I remember this drive from the airport to the city.  Look, there’s the Hillbrow Tower, the Carlton Centre, the Nelson Mandela Bridge.  Here are the streets I wandered last time.  There is my favourite café!  The only one in Braamfontein that really knows how to make a good soy latte.

My trip from Sydney to Johannesburg was only as unpleasant as any other long haul flight.  Two striking features were the all male crew (reverse affirmative action by Qantas?) and the spectacular views of Antarctica we were treated to at the mid-way point.  The latter almost made the 13 and a half hours of economy travel worth it!  The pilots informed us that the views of endless sheets of ice, broken up only by icebergs and water, were some of the best they’d had in a long time.

Arriving at OR Tambo Airport I was greeted by Linda, one of my trusted tour guides and friends from my last trip to Jo’burg.  She took me to my apartment in Braamfontein – just north of the CBD and next to Wits University, and one of the ‘new’ Jo’burg’s up and coming suburbs.  The apartment is exactly what you’d expect from a rapidly developing precinct catering to students and hipsters.  It’s new, funky, kitsch as it comes, and kind of lovely despite the cheap, falling off doorknobs and power points that don’t work.  The rental administration here is about as useless as the doorknobs, but thankfully the security guards (who are here 24/7) are lovely and keen to be helpful.  And after raiding some of the other uninhabited apartments in the building (helpfully left unlocked) I now have almost enough kitchen utensils for one. 

Actually I am rather loving my little apartment and the feeling that I will be ‘living’ in Jo’burg for the next two months.  It is exciting to go to the supermarket and shop like a local.  Here, I have discovered, the fresh produce is limited – bananas, apples, strawberries and grapes were the only fruit on offer in the Braamfontein Pick’n’Pay – but there are more varieties of rice than I have previously encountered (brown basmati – who knew?) and you can slice your own bread at the slicing machine next to the cash registers!  Stocking the cupboards makes a place feel more homely too – there’s nothing like being able to make a cup of tea and grab a pack of ginger biscuits off the shelf.  And when I run out of biscuits, the student living in apartment 327 is advertising home made muffins and scones in the foyer.

The apartment itself is two storey - though it would be more correct to say it is two rooms, separated by a staircase.  I'm on the top floor and the corner of the building, so I get spectacular roof top views from both the living and the bedroom.  Below my living room is a bus depot that throngs for most of the day with buses, vans, trailers and people.  Buses depart from it to all across Africa, and judging by the kind of luggage people load up (a mattress went into one trailer) there are some pretty serious journeys commencing over the road.  The buses leaving from there are apparently renowned for their woeful safety record though - when I leave for Kenya I think I'll stick with the plane.  

I have even met one of my neighbours.  Heather also comes from Sydney, where she recently enrolled in an Arts degree, to stop her ‘playing bridge and golf’.  Her daughter works in Jo’burg, running a youth leadership program she started with two others (Enke - see their website here) and so Heather decided to spend a semester here on exchange at Wits Uni, studying African history and literature.  Perhaps more importantly, Heather turned up at my door last night to check I had managed to obtain some food for dinner and offer me a glass of wine!  It'll be great to have a friend in the building - you have to make your own entertainment in the evening, when it's not really safe to go out.  I plan to return Heather's gesture by inviting her for dinner.  She’ll have to bring her own fork though, I only have one.

So this little apartment will be my Jo’burg base for the next seven weeks, after which I will travel to Kenya.  The trip is part of my continuing research on the expanded refugee definition that operates under African law, purportedly providing wider protection than the international refugee definition which applies in the rest of the world (see earlier blog post here). In the coming weeks, I hope to meet with and interview South African refugee lawyers, advocates and government officials.  The latter apparently have an official policy of not talking to researchers, but my apartment building has a policy of not supplying bedding, and I had no trouble grabbing some from next door…

The living room - note the lovely 70s decor

Bedroom (obvious really)

The picture at the top of the stairs is of Jan Smuts - South African statesman, Prime Minister in
the early C20th, philosopher and a major proponent of the League of Nations

View east from the living room

View from the bedroom - across the train lines to Newtown and the CBD

The bus stop - this is the most orderly arrangement of buses I've seen so far