Wilson Johwa
22 February 2008
Johannesburg — THE City of Johannesburg is set to provide "transitional housing" for newly arrived migrants, and has already identified one of its own buildings in Fordsburg for this plan.
The announcement yesterday was timely, especially in the light of xenophobic attacks at informal settlements this week.
The finer details of how beneficiaries will be chosen and how long they will stay will be decided by a committee with representation from migrants.
"We have the building and it has a capacity of 300, but we want to start with 100," said a member of the committee, Emmanuel Bihune.
The m anager of the migrants help desk, Thuli Mlangeni, said beneficiaries would become registered migrants, "but one should not overlook that there are more undocumented migrants looking for accommodation vis-a-vis legal migrants".
Though details of the proposed housing scheme were scanty, the city might already have a model.
Consultant and development planner Tanya Zack said existing rental buildings providing inexpensive accommodation were the refurbished Europa Hotel and Rondebosch building, both in the inner city.
Owned by the city, they provided short-term transitional housing and rented rooms for about R600 a month.
The move by the municipality comes during an upsurge in attacks on foreigners in informal settlements. This week, about 200 foreigners sought refuge at the Laudium police station in Pretoria following an outbreak of xenophobic attacks at the nearby Itireleng squatter settlement, where foreigners were accused of involvement in crime.
"They were taken to the community centre in Laudium on Wednesday where they spent the night. There were about 200 people last night; around 170 people are still at the centre," said Capt Thomas Mufamadi of the police yesterday.
Since Monday, shops, shacks and a church have been razed, forcing migrants from Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia and Zimbabwe to flee. Several Zulus and Xhosas were also targeted by hundreds of squatters armed with pangas, steel poles, guns, garden implements and planks.
Yesterday, residents assaulted three foreign nationals whom they accused of committing crimes in the area. This followed Monday's incident in which police vehicles were damaged when police intervened in the matter.
A report launched yesterday by the University of the Witwatersrand's forced migration studies programme places housing at the centre of migrants' woes. It argued that migrants' inclusion in housing policy would have a direct effect on public health, urban regeneration, infrastructural service provision and the building of inclusive, culturally diverse world-class cities.
In SA , a small number of shelters and refugee service providers offered temporary support to desperate migrants. But the majority sought shelter in the private sector where they encountered "widespread discrimination and xenophobia" from landlords and estate companies, many of whom were unaware of what constituted a legal migrant and whether it was legal to rent to them.
This often left migrants with no choice but to informally sub-lease. In Gauteng, 77% of private rental accommodation used by migrants was sublet from other tenants.
Tara Polzer, the report's co-author, said the physical deterioration of buildings was both a source and consequence of prevailing policies.
"If we're talking of the poor and new arrivals, they move in areas that are already derelict because those are the only places they can afford.
"So the decay usually precedes the foreigners, but once they are there, there is less incentive for those areas to be maintained." With Sapa
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