Imagine this. For any number of reasons, your countries government has decided to engage in a war with another country. Although you personally had no say in the matter, the war is in full effect and the place you used to call your home is now an unsafe place for you and your family to live
So you quit your steady job, you pull your children from their school, you do your best to pack up all the things that made your house your home and you tell your family that you are going to have to move to another country. Maybe just for a little while, maybe forever.
Upon arrival at your new place of residence, everything is different. The food tastes different. The water tastes different and wreaks havoc on your digestive system. You are unfamiliar with the neighbourhood. You know nobody.
Then, you are told my the government upon immigration that before you can start to get settled in the new place that you just need to go down to the Home Affairs office to fill out some quick paperwork to get your ‘refugee status’. When you arrive at the Home Affairs office – it is not so much an office at all and you are asked to sit outside in a long queue of other people also waiting to fill out their paperwork. That day, the line is too long and you don’t get to the front of the queue before the office closes.
So you come back the next day. At this particular office, there is no public toilet available. There is no organized queuing system and other irritated, stressed-out people have pushed their way in front of you in the line. For some unlucky women in the line up, the close quarters and confined space means the occasional unwanted sexual contact. Your nightmare has gotten even worse, if possible.
For refugees in South Africa who are forced to seek refugee status at the Home Affairs office in Maitland, this is not just a bad dream. It is their life and it can be hours, days and even weeks before a family or individual is attended to.
The lives of those seeking refuge in a foreign country is plagued by layers upon layers of complications and stressors. The office in which they are required to attain refugee status should NOT be an additional problem to add to the long list.
Small changes to the system can make a big difference.
Several week’s ago, SAMGI’s Chris Mitchell sent an email to the Home Affairs Office here in Cape Town, requesting that a change be made to the way in which the queuing process works.
“We have been made aware that foreign national women are subject to continual sexual harassment and assault as a result of the queuing process at the Home Affairs intake centre in Maitland. Foreign national men and women line up early in the morning, indeed sometimes staying overnight, in an effort to gain a place inside the intake centre where their application for asylum or refugee status can be completed and processed. The queuing process is one in which people push up against each other in a struggle to gain entrance. Such closeness of persons has allowed men to abuse women. Women are subject to inappropriate touching and sexual intrusions.
We are asking that you strongly recommend queuing systems that prevent these sexual violations. Forthcoming suggestions for the safety and well-being of the women include: instructing Home Affairs guards to be attentive and act against any such acts; installing chairs or seating that gives proper spacing between persons; and/or establishing separate queues for women and men.”
Not a completely different office setup for the facility, but simply separate queues. A rope dividing the two queues would suffice.
As of this week, no response has yet come from the Home Affairs office.
So often, individuals will hear of a problem such as this one and think ‘This is too big of a problem for me to tackle alone. What can one person possibly do to fix a problem so large?’
But sometimes, small changes (like a better queuing system at the Home Affairs office) is a small change that can make a big difference in something so important as welcoming people to this country.
