Center meets needs of asylum seekers in South Africa

By: Carol Fouke-Mpoyo|Relief Web

Stella Mkiliwane slipped into the crowd of asylum seekers waiting in a dusty, rocky, littered field down the street from the government-run Refugee Affairs Reception Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Her objective: to expedite entry into the center for the most vulnerable of these applicants for refugee status: women with very young babies, the ill, the elderly and the disabled. “They should not have to wait long hours outdoors to be seen by reception center staff,” she said.

Mkiliwane is on the staff of the Refugee Ministries Centre (RMC), a South African non-governmental organization that, with government approbation, provides legal assistance to asylum seekers, monitors their access to the refugee status determination process, and looks out for their human rights.

The RMC is “a home away from home, an oasis in the desert,” commented an Eritrean client who described the religious persecution he had fled and how the RMC has helped him and so many others.

Church World Service supports the RMC through its Durable Solutions for Displaced Persons program, whose several projects address the special protection needs of refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons and returnees.

In South Africa, displaced persons needing protection number in the millions. A large number of them are Zimbabweans who like Mkiliwane fled economic collapse and political repression. There also are large numbers of asylum seekers from Malawi, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Bangladesh and other countries.

While South Africa has among the most advanced refugee laws in the world, implementation is fraught with problems due to a lack of resources, information and oversight. As a result, thousands of asylum seekers are turned away every day from the country’s six Refugee Affairs Reception Centres.

People are forced either to queue for days, bribe their way to the front of the line, or give up and remain undocumented. The crowds are all the larger because asylum seekers must check in at least every 30 days, and refugees must renew status every two years.

Furthermore, non-nationals face employment discrimination and the constant threat of detention, deportation and xenophobic violence, such as in 2008 when dozens were killed and thousands displaced.

Asylum seekers “are already desperate, broken down by the situations they are running from,” commented the RMC’s Busani Annette Moyo. “They think South Africa is a safe haven. It’s not.”

In the face of such overwhelming need, the RMC is on site daily at the reception centers in Pretoria and Johannesburg. It reports allegations of corruption and staff misconduct or abuse, intervening when needed. At the government’s request, the RMC also secures corruption-resistant interpreters for the two centers.

Community-based paralegals, many of them recruited from local churches, help about 250 people each month with their asylum claims, again prioritizing the most vulnerable: women, children, elderly, people with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses, and people with disabilities.

The RMC also sees between 150-225 people a month at the Lindela Immigration Detention Center, helping with such legal needs as contesting wrongful detention and addressing reports of human rights violations.

“The government is beginning to see us as neutral people who can advise them objectively,” said the RMC’s founder and coordinator Emmanuel Ngenzi Nyakarashi.

A Rwandan Tutsi born and reared in exile in Uganda, Nyakarashi studied clinical psychology and international refugee law and emigrated to South Africa in the 1990s. As he listened to his fellow immigrants’ struggles to survive in that country, he realized the need for ministry to refugees and asylum seekers and in 1996 launched what would become the RMC.

Always in the thick of things, the RMC helped coordinate the faith community’s donations of food and clothing to survivors of the 2008 attacks. Nyakarashi regularly addreses churches along with Bible colleges and seminaries “to plant seeds in new pastors.” Faith groups that have been especially supportive of the RMC’s work include the Anglican Church, Methodist Church of Southern Africa, Lutherans, Presbyterians and the Muslim community.

Media Contacts:

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