South Africa
Video: Voices from the camps – Dolly & Gloria Makwakwa
In the lead-up to Africa Day (25 May), MSF South Africa is releasing a series of five hard-hitting and poignant video testimonies from refugees and migrants displaced by April’s wave of xenophobic violence in Durban to refugee camps in Chatsworth and Isipingo. By DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (MSF) SOUTHERN AFRICA.
One night in April this year, Dolly, her single mother, Gloria Makwakwa, and two siblings, fled to the Chatsworth displacement camp in Durban, KwaZuluNatal, along with hundreds of other foreign nationals, after a spate of xenophobic attacks across the city.
Mozambican–born Gloria, now a hairdresser, came to South Africa as a young woman with no family links ‘back home’ after her parents died. Dolly was born in Durban in 2006.
Dolly has now lost weeks of schooling. She misses her friends and teachers terribly. Dolly like many of the other 300 children in the Chatsworth camp don’t understand xenophobia – but they bear the brunt all the same. DM