Battling to be accepted in South Africa

Solomon Ygzaw left Ethiopia at 19 at the end of the 1980s. His siblings emigrated to the US to escape the harsh life in Ethiopia and he went to Egypt, attracted by the art. He worked in an art gallery for four years. At 25 he visited Johannesburg but didn’t like it and headed for Cape Town.

He says he was surprised by this city which he considers different from other African cities. “Lots of different people - race, religion, rich, poor- who can not live together,” he says.

He has never been a victim of xenophobia but after 20 years in this country he has never managed to make a true South African friend.

He has never obtained South African citizenship and every six months must renew his refugee status. It’s as if South Africa itself reminded him twice a year that he is still not part of the South African community, he says.

After working as a street trader, Solomon created his own business and now has two restaurants in Long Street in the city centre. He links his love for art and for Ethiopian food by selling art in his restaurants. He lives in Long Street with his two sons.

Solomon considers himself happy and is not aiming to resettle in Ethiopia. But he and his Ethiopian friends agree that they have not really been accepted here and will always remain immigrants in the eyes of the population and the South African authorities.

Discussing the xenophobic attacks in April 2015 he says: “I can understand sometimes the feelings of South Africans about foreigners like me but, are things going to change if they just kill people? Can’t we just speak to each other and tried to find a solution for everybody?”

Zinash, from Addis Ababa, is a 26 year old student doing a PhD at Stellenbosch University’s Postharvest Technology Research Laboratory.

She won a scholarship to study in another country and wanted to explore. She chose Stellenbosch because of a professor well known in her field.

But she has some regrets. It is complicated, she says, to make friends here. She is expected to do her PhD in three years, but she would like to complete her studies sooner. Her parents are worried about her safety in South Africa.

Most of her friends, she says, are foreigners from Europe who came here on an exchange programme.

“White South Africans are conservative. I can say they don’t even want to say hello to others.”

Only one of her friends has a South African friend and they met in Europe, not here.

She has never been a victim of xenophobia but she feels she will never be part of South Africa.

Ali Mohammed was working in Jarso, Ethiopia on an agricultural project in April 1988 when the project was attacked by rebel fighters who kidnapped Mohammed and colleagues and left them in South Sudan. Mohammed managed to find his way to a village and then back to Jarso. The camp had been burned down.

Ali Mohammed at his shop. Photo by Christine Ayela.

After this incident Mohammed decided to leave. He left for Kenya in February 1991, leaving his two sisters in Ethiopia.

“Something was pushing me from inside to leave my job and go far away to free myself, where nobody can recognise me, where I could be free from the past , from everything.”

In 1994 he began what was to be a long journey through Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland to the South African border and join Johannesburg. After a few days in Johannesburg, he left for Cape Town, excited by the discovery of a new country in the midst of change.

But, he says, he soon realised that South Africans were very suspicious of strangers.

He suffered a xenophobic attack in Grassy Park at the house he was living in with Ethiopian friends, and was disappointed by the response of the police, who never took the matter further. He was attacked a second time, in a park in Woodstock, by nine young men who stole his jacket and his passport - and once again he found little help from the police, he says.

But he obtained South African citizenship in 1998 and has a clothing store in Bellville, where he lives.

Today Mohammed has no complaints. He is happy, he says, partly because his religion, Islam, helps him to stand back from his experiences and see them clearly. He has self-published a book about his experiences.

He returns to see his sisters in Ethiopia sometimes.

But he does not feel safe in South Africa.

“We are not secure here,” he says. “We lost many of our colleagues from xenophobic attacks.”