Where a man feels at home, outside of where
he's born, is where he's meant to go.
~ Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa
If the man at South
African Home Affairs in Qwaqwa had not decided that he could not process my
visa due to the fact that he was “in mourning” and if the South African Home Affairs officer in Paarl had not decided to deny my request (and threatened to
put in me in jail) because he (falsely) believed I was border hopping, I would
not have found myself on 56 Barrack Street at 5:30 am on a Monday morning.
I was the third
person to arrive at Cape Town’s Home Affairs office that morning—a Somali and a
Congolese refugee being my two companions. The security guard was intently speaking
with the two men and I edged closer to listen.
“Zuma needs to
step down,” the guard explains. “He is ruining Mandela’s legacy.”
The Somali and Congolese
man are nodding in agreement.
“Did you see
them booing him at the funeral?” the guard asks.
“I saw it in the
paper,” says the Somali refugee.
“Mmm,” the Congolese
man nods along.
“What did you
think about Marikana last year?” I can’t resist jumping in.
“Ohhhh that was
bad. That would have never happened under Mandela,” the guard says. “You know South
African politics?”
“Just a little
that I’ve read here and there,” I say. “But if you don’t like Zuma, what kind
of leadership would you like to see in South Africa?”
And before I
know it all three men are avidly discussing what needs to be done for South
Africa to truly be a rainbow nation
and what changes in leadership must take place. I listen, intrigued by the fact
that two of the three men are not South African.
“You know a lot
about South African politics,” I say to the Somali refugee.
“Well I have
to,” he says. “I don’t want to go back to Somalia. Cape Town is an amazing city
and South Africa is my home now.”
Home is such a slippery
concept, especially in a “globalizing” world. I have often struggled to define
what home means and I am struck by his certainty that Cape Town is home, not a
resting place until he can return to his motherland.
More people
begin to arrive and two lines begin to form – one for those seeking refugee
status, and one for the rest of us. I take my spot at the front of the
“everything else” line and patiently wait for the doors to open at seven-thirty.
At seven-fifteen
a lady yells at me, “Go, go, go!”
“Ma'am, the doors only open at seven-thirty,” I say.
“If you don’t
go, I’m going in front of you,” she responds.
Soon there
is a whole crowd of people pushing and shoving behind me until a guard stops
the crowd and asks them to please wait patiently until seven-thirty.
Seven-thirty
comes and it is a mad rush through the doors. Queues, apparently, do not
matter. I find myself sprinting to the information desk to get my number, so
that my five-thirty start to the day is not wasted in vain.
I
sit down, waiting for my number to be called, and an engaged couple, Thembelihle and Anashe from Zimbabwe, sit next me. “Those were
quite the lines this morning,” Thembelihle remarks.
“They were….different
than how we queue in Canada.”
Thembelihle laughs, “It’s chaos here, but you get
used it.”
“I take it
you’ve done this before?” I say.
“Oh many times,”
Thembelihle responds, “working visas, student vsias,
visitor visas.” He proceeds to tell me their story:
Thembelihle and Anashe fell in love in Zimbabwe when
they were just eighteen. However, there were few economic opportunities, and Thembelihle was too poor to pay for Anashe’s lobola. Looking
for a better life, Thembelihle
moved to Cape Town in search
of work. He started out as a janitor working double shifts to make money, but
he knew that to really secure a future for Anashe and himself he needed to go
to school.
“I had never
used a computer before, but I knew that technology was a growing sector,” Thembelihle explains. “I decided that I must go to
school to learn about technology. I remember going to an Internet café for the
first time to try and see how the Internet worked. It was a disaster,” he recalls. “But I continued to go and slowly but surely I began to figure it out.”
With the help of
friends he had made in the city Thembelihle was able to gather funds to attend
school. Every other spare rand went towards calling Anashe back in Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, Anashe patiently waited for her love, trusting that one day they
would be together.
Fast-forward six years later and Thembelihle
has permanent residence in Cape
Town. Anashe was at Home Affairs to extend her visitor
visa.
“This is the last time I’ll be getting a visitor visa,” she smiles.
Thembelihle has raised enough money for the lobola,
which means that Thembelihle and Anashe will be getting married
this spring and Anashe will finally be able to live in Cape Town permanently.
“You don’t want
to live in Zimbabwe?” I ask.
“We will always
go back to visit family in Zimbabwe,” Thembelihle says. “But Cape Town is where we can see
ourselves building a life, raising kids, and growing old together. It’s a place
we can make home.”
For the second
time that morning, I am struck by the language of home.
My number is
called, and after a good half hour of explaining my work in Lesotho, why I have
come to South Africa, and assuring them that I am really and truly not border hopping, I am finally granted my visa.
As I leave, I
find out that Anashe has also been awarded an extended visitor visa. “It’s
always a nightmare coming down here, but it’s so worth it to be able to stay,”
she beems.
“It really is,
isn’t it,” I say. “This truly is an amazing place.”
This past fall I
was reading Hemingway’s Green Hills of
Africa and there was a line that hit me:
Where a man feels at
home, outside of where he's born, is where he's meant to go.
It is easy to see why Cape
Town is a place so many want to call home. For the Congolese and Somali refugees,
Cape Town offers a safe haven. For the Zimbabwean couple, Cape Town represents
economic opportunity and a place where they can build a future for their family.
For myself, it has been a much-needed resting place.
Of course, it is not with
out its shortcomings: Mandela’s vision for a rainbow nation is still very much a work in progress. Even if you
have enough wealth to buy security, crime is still a problem. More
superficially, there are a few too many people who look like they stepped out
of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.
Yet, there is
something magical about this place. Maybe it’s the way the fog rolls over the
top of Table Mountain on misty mornings, or perhaps it’s the dramatic landscape
of Cape Point, the waves at Muizenburg and quaint coffee shops in Kalk Bay.
Maybe this city’s magic resides in the rich history of the land or in the
sincere hospitality of South Africans. Whatever it is, there’s something here
that makes people from around the world not only want to stay but to claim this
place as home….even if it does mean dealing
with the chaos of Home Affairs.
