S Africa's migrants left in the cold

By Jonah Fisher
BBC News, Johannesburg

Gloria says there has been no plan to reintegrate the migrants

Life has not been kind to Gloria Mahango and her three small children.

Four years ago, her husband, a Zimbabwean activist, was killed. The family escaped to South Africa and settled in a suburb of Johannesburg.

But in May they were forced to flee once more.

More than 60 people were killed as South Africans turned on the foreigners who had been living among them.

It was Gloria's South African neighbour who told her she had to go.

"She went and picked up our laundry and dipped it in muddy water," Gloria said, sitting outside her white tent.

"She then said: 'I'm attacking you' to the Congolese woman, 'then the next one will be Gloria and the third one is Sisay. All these people I want you out of here.' So it was a big fight."

Fearful of her life, Gloria and her children have - along with thousands of other foreigners - spent the last two months sheltering in government camps. But they were never intended to be permanent.

"They have to leave the shelter because we actually invited them to the shelter to provide for them in their time of need," Thabo Masebe from Gauteng Provincial Government told me."

I cannot say they will be killed. But the community does not want to accept them and community says we won't allow them to come back Eva Sephiwe, South African woman

"We are convinced that conditions exist in all the communities within Gauteng for all the displaced people to safely return to their places. We don't expect anyone to refuse to leave.

But in the townships which saw the worst of May's violence, time has proved a slow healer.

In Ramaphosa, to the east of Johannesburg, a Mozambican man was doused in petrol, set alight and burnt to death.

'Not human'

But locals such as Eva Sephiwe see the foreigners as the aggressors and not the victims.

"I cannot say they will be killed," she told me, "but the community does not want to accept them and the community says we won't allow them to come back."

We did manage to find some foreigners left in Ramaphosa.

Huddled around the local police station was a small group of bedraggled Mozambicans. Sleeping on ragged mattresses under trees, they said they were scared to venture into Ramaphosa.

While we were speaking to the Mozambicans, a South African woman who worked next door to the police station called me over.

She said the real roots of the xenophobic attacks had not been addressed. She said it was the government's fault for not addressing the lack of opportunities for the country's poorest people.

"This is just not human," she told me. "Sensible people would go home. I know it's bad on the other side, but sensible people would go home if you're not wanted in a society."

'Evicted'

As we were in Ramaphosa, Gloria, the Zimbabwean woman, called us on the phone.

Like Gloria, many immigrants say they have nowhere to go

We returned to find her weeping outside the camp surrounded by her children and their few belongings. Her tent had been taken down and she had been evicted early.

Unable to return to Zimbabwe and too scared to go back to her home in Johannesburg, she was now stranded by the side of a busy road.

"They say that they were working on a plan and holding meetings to help us and that hasn't happened," she said. "They haven't reintegrated us or helped us all they've done is put me here on the street with my children. The government has really treated me very badly here in South Africa."

That night Gloria slept in the open with her children alongside her.

When the other shelters are closed in Gauteng, more than 2,000 foreigners will be forced to choose whether to risk returning to their homes - or to wait like Gloria, hoping and praying that their wretched luck is about to change.