Eric Mashaba

More than R7000 in food parcels has been handed to Zimbabwean xenophobia victims who are sheltering at Seshego police station outside Polokwane.

The provincial Cosatu, businesses and NGOs collected food for 28 Zimbabweans who lost everything in xenophobic attacks in Seshego last week.

“Since Monday, each of them has received a meal and a drink. Their children are back in school and we have organised a mobile clinic with the health department so the sick can get medication,” said provincial Cosatu spokesperson, Dan Sebabi.

Sebabi said Cosatu wanted the refugees to feel at home and to know that not all South Africans were against them.

He said the union had asked the Polokwane local municipality and disaster management office to organise alternative shelter for the refugees.

“They cannot be integrated back into the communities they fled from. Some local people still do not want them back,” Sebabi explained.

Provincial police spokesperson Brig Hangwani Mulaudzi said that by Friday last week, 20 Zimbabweans were given refuge at Seshego police station.

“The number has increased as some arrive late in the evening to sleep. Some leave in the morning while others remain,” said Mulaudzi.

Mulaudzi said the situation was still very tense in the Seshego area.

“Some people still don’t want them following the arrest of family members implicated in the attacks. Although this is a police station and not a refugee camp, we cannot turn them away.

“Our duty is to protect and deal with crime, but we cannot keep them here forever,” he said.

Mulaudzi said the risk was that if police let the Zimbabweans stay for a long time, more would go there.

Polokwane municipal spokesperson Simon Mokoatedi said no arrangements had yet been made to accommodate the Zimbabwean refugees.

“We know they are being housed by the Seshego police as some of the refugees are witnesses. We have no information from the police regarding arranging accommodation for them,” said Mokoatedi. – AENS