FUGITIVES FROM APARTHEID
Arditi, Lynn
FUGITIVES FROM APARTHEID They find no refuge here BY LYNN ARDITI Alux Nguane was sixteen when he fled South Africa. There was a miners' strike, and he was marching beside his father, a member...
...With the help of attorney Caro-lyne Waller of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Xiphu gathered clippings from South African newspapers and collected affidavits documenting his imprisonment and torture in South Africa...
...Though his father had lost much blood, they couldn't take him to the hospital for fear the police would find him there...
...The U.S...
...His fear of deportation was so great he couldn't sleep, and for several months he dropped out of school...
...There he was arrested by customs officials and taken into custody...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) orders some South African refugees to return to their so-called country of first asylum—usually Botswana, Lesotho, or Swaziland...
...Anxiety is constant: Something as minor as a parking ticket could get them reported to the INS, thrown into detention, or deported...
...You live out of a suitcase," one says...
...The Security Police struck him on the head with a rubber hose containing a coil spring...
...At the Varick Street detention center in New York City, fluorescent lights glare twenty-four hours a day, keeping him awake at night...
...In their isolation, many drink heavily...
...Twenty-two were denied...
...There is always the fear that someone, even another South African, might be an informer who will report them to the immigration authorities...
...In 1977, with the help of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, Mafole and her husband received scholarships to study in the United States...
...Those who apply for political asylum often spend years in limbo waiting for their applications to be processed...
...He told them he was a South African student living in Brooklyn...
...He has applied for political asylum in Canada...
...Some of them are told we're communists...
...At about 3:30 a.m...
...The decision of whether or not to grant asylum is made on the strength of the individual's claim," says Denie Blackburn of the INS Office of Refugee Asylum and Parole...
...AIux Nguane is still at the Varick Street detention center...
...The irony is that you need a certificate Anxiety is constant for South African exiles...
...Although the network of South Africans is strong in times of crisis, there is no formal community...
...In 1986, of the forty-six South African applications for political asylum in the United States, only ten were granted...
...Alcoholism is a widespread problem within the exile community, anxiety and depression common complaints...
...After a five-year battle, Twiggs Xiphu was granted political asylum on January 15, 1986...
...Hlongwane approached them and asked why they were following him...
...The South African refugee community here, in Daytona, in New York, in California, and in Atlanta— they've been taking care of each other," he says...
...Mafole ducked under the dashboard, and her husband drove off...
...he heard a loud banging at the door and windows...
...In 1978, Xiphu fled his home in Port Elizabeth and went to Botswana, where he applied for a scholarship from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to study in the United States...
...Knowing that he could not return to South Africa, Xiphu applied for political asylum...
...Nguane's father started running...
...Being threatened with deportation is like a nightmare come true for Mafole, who has two children in grade school and a secure job: "Do they think we can just leave our children and go back to the camps...
...Moffat founded the Center last October to offer legal and social counseling to South African refugees...
...In February 1986, using a phony passport, Nguane flew to Baltimore-Washington International Airport...
...Initially, the INS ordered him to return to Botswana, his so-called country of first asylum...
...But four years later, his visa expired, and the INS denied his application for political asylum...
...In 1982, when Mafole completed her doctorate at Howard University, she applied for political asylum...
...The officer told Hlongwane what he had feared: They were looking for a fugitive, and he fit the description...
...Something as minor as a traffic ticket could get them reported to the INS, thrown into detention, or deported...
...People who knew him say he didn't have a work permit and was unemployed...
...Xiphu entered Howard University in Washington, D.C, in January 1979...
...The INS is "far less generous," he says, in granting asylum to refugees from countries with which the U.S...
...Food was scarce, and raids by the South African army were frequent...
...He fled the country in 1977 after participating in a protest action in which eighteen fellow PAC members were imprisoned...
...He was told to leave the country or face detention...
...In November 1983, the INS denied Xiphu's request for asylum and ordered him to leave the country or face deportation...
...A white car with two men inside started driving toward them...
...But the INS does not apply this standard with an even hand, critics charge...
...If, for example, someone comes to us and says my village was bombed, they would not necessarily qualify for asylum...
...But if that person says my brother was put in jail, that may well be sufficient to warrant asylum...
...He died early the next morning...
...He graduated with honors in 1981...
...I've had cases where I've taken a person in with x-rays of bullet holes in his head and the INS has told him he doesn't have a well-founded fear of persecution," says Allan Ebert, an attorney who has represented South Africans before the INS...
...Xiphu refused to cooperate when he was taken in for questioning...
...Suddenly the police charged the protesters...
...One evening when Hlongwane was riding the subway from Manhattan to his home in Brooklyn, he noticed four men staring at him, two in police uniform and two in plain clothes...
...Before the sun rose, they buried him in secret...
...They're more interested in furthering their careers," says Sello Rometse, a thirty-year-old exile who earned a master's degree in communications from Howard...
...For years, Clement Hlongwane felt watched...
...A lawyer by training, Moffat spent four years fighting to obtain asylum in the United States...
...Mafole and her husband hid at a relative's home in a nearby township...
...Bridget Mafole is appealing the INS decision in her case and has not yet received an answer...
...When night fell, they fled the country...
...Outside, her husband was waiting in the car...
...Crouched down, Mafole could hear her husband shouting, "There they are...
...The white car followed...
...To be granted political asylum, applicants must be able to prove a "well-founded fear of being persecuted" upon return to their home country, according to the INS...
...The authorities give the impression that if they get too involved, it might jeopardize their status here...
...He hoped to make enough money some day to come to the United States...
...Last December, her request was denied...
...Since 1980, only 20 to 25 per cent of all foreigners who applied for asylum have been successful, says Arthur Helton, director of the political asylum project of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights...
...Hlongwane became nervous...
...Several suicides have claimed the lives of exiles during the last five years, the most recent one committed by a thirty-two-year-old South African man in Washington, D.C, who came here on a student visa...
...The stress of exile afflicts many South Africans...
...In the end, many are denied...
...Some exchange students fear getting involved in the anti-apartheid struggle...
...You don't sink any roots because you never know when you might have to pack up and leave...
...After one such raid, Mafole was detained for four months...
...I thought any day I might be put on a plane back to South Africa," he recalls...
...Government has close ties, irrespective of their human-rights record...
...But when the Botswana government refused to accept him, the INS argued that Xiphu did not present sufficient evidence to prove he was persecuted in South Africa...
...One night in October 1977, he came home late from a fundraising concert for the banned South African Students Organization...
...In 1976, she was leading a protest for higher wages and better working conditions...
...The four followed...
...the United States only to find they are unwelcome...
...Beneath yellow coveralls, his small frame seems to be shrinking, and the whites of his eyes are jaundiced...
...He went down to the port and stowed away on a ship...
...The thirty-three-year-old from Soweto had come to the United States on a student visa in 1978...
...At Howard University, South African blacks tend to fall into two groups: the exiles and the exchange students, with the exiles labeled as radicals or troublemakers...
...One morning, the police came looking for Mafole at her office...
...Hlongwane never found out whether he was the person they were looking for...
...It was a lot of paperwork," he says...
...It was the Security Police...
...Hlongwane was indicted in absentia...
...Bridget Mafole, the pseudonym of a black South African exile, was a social worker in Soweto...
...When they finally reached the highway leading out of the city, the car was no longer in sight...
...Many South Africans are discouraged from even applying...
...But when people lose their jobs or get evicted from their homes or have immigration problems, there just aren't enough resources to help...
...Into the night, his condition worsened...
...Months after the beatings, Xiphu still felt as though something was trickling down the back of his skull, as if he were bleeding...
...Nguane is just one of an estimated 1,000 South Africans who have sought refuge in Lynn Arditi, a former editorial intern at The Progressive, is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C...
...There was a miners' strike, and he was marching beside his father, a member of the African National Congress, past row upon row of tin-roofed shacks that lined the streets of his Soweto township...
...Some go underground, frequently changing residence and working off the books...
...For more than fourteen months, Mafole and her husband were shuttled from one refugee camp to the next in the frontline states...
...The exchange students from back home are told not to associate too closely with the exiles," says Hlongwane...
...To be safe, he got up and moved to the next car...
...Nguane's health has deteriorated since he was taken into custody almost fourteen months ago...
...I get depressed," he says...
...Then the four men disappeared...
...as he swerved right and left through the streets of Johannesburg for more than an hour trying to lose the white car...
...They treat me like a criminal...
...Nguane's mother gave Nguane $30 and told him to leave the country...
...The person has to show he or she will be singled out...
...Up until January, he worked as a parking-lot attendant...
...She slipped out the back door, escaping to the parking lot...
...They ask me, 'Well, who are you?' " Hlongwane recalls...
...Nguane ran too, but when he looked around, his father was gone...
...A forty-two-year-old refugee from Pretoria, Moffat came to the United States in 1982 after spending fifteen years on Rob-ben Island, where Nelson Mandela is imprisoned...
...to convince the INS you've been persecuted, but of course you don't get certificates of torture," says Waller...
...A student leader and activist in the Black Consciousness Movement, Xiphu was subjected to brutal abuses by the apartheid regime...
...We were paid eighty-three Rand as professionals, and our supervisors, who were high-school-aged white boys, were paid three times as much," she recalls, her voice rising in anger...
...Later that night, his father struggled home, face bloodied...
...For three years, Xiphu's application wended its way through the INS bureaucracy...
...George Moffat heads the South African Refugee Relief Center in Washington, D.C...
...For Russians, Rumanians, Ethiopians, and Afghans—refugees fleeing Communist-dominated regimes—the approval rate was 50 to 80 per cent," says Helton...
...Twiggs Xiphu, thirty-two, holds out his forearm to show scars where the South African Security Police put lighted cigarette butts...
...For the next fourteen years, Nguane worked as a cook on shipboard or as a packer on the docks...
...Nguane's mother cleaned the wounds with iodine...
...An active member of the banned Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), he had been detained in South Africa many times and had survived the beatings...
...Those who live in the United States illegally tend not to associate with many people...
...For many, unable to afford telephones, communication with other South Africans is by word of mouth only...
...Many are unemployed and do not qualify for food stamps or health insurance...
...These front-line states are repeatedly flooded with South Africans who languish in refugee camps that are under constant surveillance by the South African government and frequently the target of raids by the South African army...
Vol. 51 • April 1987 • No. 4
