Baby born in a tent as African migrants camp outside Cape Town repatriation centre

Thousands of mainly Zimbabwean and Malawian nationals have been sleeping outside the Home Affairs Repatriation Centre in Epping since Sunday, waiting for the buses to take them to their home countries. Including women and children, they are enduring the worst of Cape Town’s cold and wet winter.

According to the chairperson of Zimbabweans in Cape Town, Weston Willie, there were over a thousand Zimbabweans needing to be processed on Friday. Willie said that the majority of women who were at the repatriation centre are also queuing for clinic services. “If you go inside here, a lot of mothers and children are in the queue for the clinic to get medication for different reasons. From Sunday, they have been sleeping outside in the cold, so a lot of people have caught flu; they are coughing and they are sick. We also have people with chronic diseases and they are suffering,” he said.

The country director for Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), Mhlonipheni Ncube told Elitsha that one woman gave birth in the tent outside the repatriation centre on Thursday evening. “If you look at the place, it is not conducive for anyone to give birth as it does not have privacy and the child is exposed to a lot of things. The lady was rushed to the hospital and after a few hours, she was brought back. She is still recovering and is expected to travel in that state,” he said. ADRA, according to Ncube is assisting with transport, provision of sanitary wear to women, food for children and blankets.

Women’s experiences at the Repatriation Centre

Two women, who are mothers and have been sleeping in the tent with no walls since the night before the 30th of June ‘deadline’ set by anti-immigrant groups for African immigrants to leave, told Elitsha that they had to leave their homes for fear of being attacked.

Unsure they would make it to their countries of origin, they chose to remain anonymous. “I came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2020 looking for greener pastures but now I have to go back because of the xenophobic attacks. I was working as a live-in maid and it was my decision to leave and not my employer’s. Even if I insisted on staying, my employer was going to be in trouble with the law. I was paid R9,500 a month,” she said.

Another woman, who worked as a farmworker on an orange and naartjie farm, said that she has not been sleeping since Sunday as her child cries the whole night. “We got paid by the number of bags one filled a day. You get paid R3.00 a bag and based on that I was paid R250 a day,” she said.

A mother and child sorting damp clothes outside the Home Affairs Repatriation Centre in Cape Town on Tuesday.

According to Ncube, there are seven buses that are supposed to leave for Musina on Friday. The Zimbabwean consulate has been given until Friday to find alternative accommodation for those who are still to be processed. “What we are told is that there is lack of co-ordination at the Beit Bridge border as people are turned back to be processed in Musina again,” he said.