Of clobbered teeth and shots, repatriated Kenyans narrate SA's xenophobia ordeal

Ali Jelle Sampul from Mandera, who lived in Durban, shows his documents when he returned to Kenya at JKIA. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

A Kenya Airways aeroplane carrying 47 repatriated Kenyans landed at JKIA at around 10 pm from Johannesburg, South Africa (SA), on Wednesday night.

The 47 are among hundreds – most of them living undocumented while in the country – who sought help from the Kenya High Commission in the city of Pretoria.

A visibly shaken Ali Jellah Sanbur, a native of Mandera, expressed gratitude for the embassy’s facilitation of the group’s safe passage from SA back home.

“I have been in SA for 6years. When they [South Africans calling for the exit of undocumented immigrants] announced that the deadline was June 30, we had no support to salvage anything within that time. All we could do was run. And whatever we left behind was vandalised and everything else burned to ashes,” Sanbur says.

He says that four months ago his shop – his family’s source of livelihood – in Durban was attacked by goons (who told him that he must leave). During the attack, he was shot and a set of front teeth was knocked out by crude weapons.

“I was taken to hospital and I managed to heal,” he says.

Baylian Wambugu Muthoni and Antony Gathura after returning to Kenya from South Africa. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

Sanbur was with his family: a wife and children. Durban is ground zero for the clamour to chase away illegal immigrants. A group calling itself March and March is behind the push to eject the likes of Sanbur from SA.

South Africa has close to 20 years of anti-immigrant history, ironically and specifically targeting other black-skinned Africans, with many human rights experts calling it xenophobia.

Sanbur arrived at the Kenyan embassy, his place of refuge, approximately two weeks ago.

Tired, emotional, and traumatised, all he could say was, “Alhamdulilah! We are now home.”

Baylian Wambugu, a Gen Z who was on the same flight as Sanbur, also commended the government for swinging into action to help get them back home.

He says: “I'm happy to be home. I thank God. I also want to thank our government since all this started; they've helped us get back home nicely.

“The repatriation process has been a success because of the High Commission office at Pretoria: they served us nicely for the few days.

“SA is such a nice country. It’s just that these people after targeting illegal immigrants, targeted black people. On the streets, no white people were marching.”

While he is grateful for being brought back home, Wambugu took issue with the government not facilitating returnees with money to even move from the airport back home.

“People have come here with their families. Most people are just trying to start life again here at home. Most people have not been paid.

“There is a gentleman who had a child living with disability. Yesterday, as I was leaving, I called him to just find out his situation. He has not received even a single shilling. And I am not aware of anyone who has been facilitated beyond arrival at JKIA.

“Repatriating someone – while we appreciate what they’ve done – and then dumping them at the airport: what does that mean?”

Sanbur was lucky to have a friend come pick him and his family. He is, however, not sure how they will journey back home to Mandera East.

“I will need Sh6,000 per person. Since I have lost everything, I am not sure how I will raise that money. The government should do more for us. I am not planning to go back to SA. I want to resettle here and become productive again,” he says.

Anthony Gathure, a Gen Z who travelled to SA last year – in search of greener pastures – asked members of the press to assist him with a fare to reach home.

“I come from Nakuru; that is where I need to go. But I have nothing; I was mugged [by anti-immigrant goons] – losing even my passport in the process,” he said.

Carrying a tattered polythene bag that resembled a garbage bag, Gathure looked like he did not even have the time to properly pack and leave.  

On Wednesday, June 30, the deadline was set for undocumented migrants to leave SA by the March and March. It is also the day thousands upon thousands, heeding the group’s call, turned up across towns, cities and townships in South Africa to protest against illegal immigration.

Many migrants interpreted the deadline as a threat to their physical wellbeing; many sought refuge at the embassies of their nations. The June 30 protests were by far the largest and the most ferocious since the group started addressing illegal immigration as a menace. The majority of the marchers carried wooden sticks, wielding them in a threatening manner.

“They are so rude and so full of themselves. They only want to engage you using one language: Zulu. If you can’t speak the language, that is their cue that you are an illegal immigrant, then they pounce on you,” Gathure said.

Officially known as isiZulu, the language is spoken by the Amazulu people – the largest ethnic group in South Africa. They primarily reside in the eastern coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) – which is also home to Durban.

The last three to four months have seen protesters and marchers, carrying sticks – said to be symbols of masculinity, authority and protection among the Zulu – chanting ‘abahambe’, similar to the Swahili word ‘wahame’, both of them meaning ‘they (people) should leave’.

“When they meet you, they tell you abahambe: leave. We as Africans should be one. Unfortunately, they treated us like that. Even so, I do not wish that South Africans in Kenya should be treated the same way they treated us. We should not pay evil with evil,” Wambugu says.

According to South African police, there were 120 marches across the country on June 30. Of those, 108 were peaceful and orderly. The rest had varying degrees of violence, leading to the arrest of at least 900 people.

There is an abundance of footage showing marchers interrogating and, in some cases, inflicting physical violence on migrants in major cities and towns. The Mozambican government says at least five of its citizens have been killed as a result of the anti-immigrant activities. So far, there is no official report of a Kenyan being killed.

“It is true: people are being killed. It is only that South African media are very good at portraying a more acceptable image of such behaviour to the world. Personally, I know at least two people who were killed around the same area where I lived in Johannesburg,” Wambugu says.

Officially, foreign-born migrants make up an estimated 4 per cent of South Africa’s 62 million people, despite the rhetoric being pushed by groups involved.

According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM), South Africa is number eight among countries with the highest number of Kenyan migrants: hosting just over 20,000 Kenyans as at 2020. USA (with 157,000) and the United Kingdom (139,000) were at the time the leading destination countries for Kenyans.

Wambugu, a well-spoken young man, has welcomed investors who find South Africa’s treatment of black immigrants despicable to come and invest in Kenya.

“Kenyan GenZs don’t want to fight anyone. We just want to work and provide for our families. Let the investors come here and work with us.”

Wambugu has not given up on the South African dream, stating, “If things change, and I'm documented, I'll be back. That said, East or West, home is the best.”

That may be unachievable for at least 5 years, as we learnt that many – if not all – of the returnees were slapped with a 5-year ban from entering South Africa.

Government authorities, police included, have been accused of being complacent and failing to protect immigrants from marauding groups.

“There is no place for racism, sexism, tribalism, xenophobia, Afrophobia or any other form of intolerance,” South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said recently.

The president has also been seen meeting and shaking hands with the leaders of the March and March group; with some praising it as a good move that moves the country into dialogue, while others express disappointment, suggesting that the president's appeasement to the group may just embolden them further.

South Africa carries scars of apartheid – a system that treated black South Africans as less than and denied them equal rights. Experts say the embers of apartheid are still smouldering, denying many black South Africans economic opportunities.

About a third of the people are out of work. Yet, South Africa is the continent’s largest ⁠economy – a factor that keeps drawing immigrants.

But even as South Africa’s anti-immigrants’ crackdown escalates, the African Union’s conspicuous silence has exposed not just diplomatic failure but an economic time bomb that could cost the region billions of lost trade, remittances sand regionals integration gains.

Fatuma Mohamed, an international relations expert and Dr Kenneth Ombongi, a historian and a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, warn that AU’s tactical silence is enabling a crisis that might impoverish not just South Africa but every country with citizens working or doing business there.

“The African Union should intervene because there is a policy that the AU has adopted on free movement of Africans and free trade within the African continent. WE cannot advocate for integration and trade within the continent and at the same time, a fellow African country is chasing African communities,” Mohamed said.

Dr Ombongi noted that the muted response by AU shows that the body may have chosen to use diplomatic engagement instead of open confrontation to the situation in SA, citing the Union’s principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the member states.

“That one is a no-go zone to the African Union and it has crippled the AU,” said Ombongi, emphasising that some of the principles of the Union have reduced it to “a toothless bulldog’’.

Fatuma further insisted that AU intervention into the xenophobic tension in SA would be economically beneficial, stating that the continent loses about 70 per cent of its market potential to other continents.

She added that the loss can only be stopped through continental integration. However, the actions by South Africa, she said, are doing the exact opposite by demonising fellow Africans, including Kenyans, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Ghanaians.

“When we remove our citizens from all the African-led companies, it is the South African economy that will go down,” said Mohamed.

“We don’t want to see African going down just because of our misunderstanding and our bad policy that our governments are not implementing,” she added.

On his part, Ombongi argued that the crisis will have a direct economic hit on Kenyans.

“We have many Kenyans who have made it big in South Africa. Their movement out of that country is not going to affect South Africa but it will also affect several businesses,” he said.

He pointed out the tourism sector as one of the business linkages between Kenya and SA that will be majorly affected by the crisis

“Our tourism sector has linkages with South Africa and we will feel it economically almost immediately. Several Kenyans are working in the hospitality sector in South Africa. Where will we place them if they return here since the tourism sector here is shrinking?” Ombongi argued.

According to Ombongi, the Somali-Kenyan business community doing business in SA and small traders and artisans, including curios sellers, soapstone traders who have built cross-border markets over decades, will face instant destitution if expelled.

“Many Kenyans of Somali origin operating businesses in South Africa are closing down and they will definitely come back home, but where are opportunities here for them?” he posed.

Although Kenya’s remittance inflows are dominated by the North America corridor and Gulf countries, the experts argue that mass displacement from SA would turn off the remittances tap, affecting many Kenyan families with relatives in that country.

He dismissed the claim that driving South Africa’s anti-foreigner movement, that expelling migrants will create jobs for locals.

“The majority of the Kenyans, for example, in South Africa are people working in businesses and NGOs.  Will that person running in the streets be a lecturer where some Kenyans are? It is not going to happen,” Ombongi argued.

Mohamed expressed worries that other African countries might retaliate against South Africa in their countries, pointing to South African corporate dominance in Kenya, including the insurance sector, mining and retail chains.