Inside the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town on Thursday morning, blankets, bags and personal belongings of hundreds displaced people lined the walls. In the pews and on the floor, women and children who had made the space their beds for the night began to wake to face the day. Outside, men who slept outside the church because of the limited space inside covered themselves with the purple blankets donated the night before by Gift of the Givers.

The group took refuge at the church following a violent eviction from the Waldorf arcade at the hands of the police on Wednesday. It is likely to be home for a while as their pleas to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to transport them out of South Africa have yet to be acceded to.

“My body is sore. I’m so tired, all the men slept outside,” said Daud Haider from Bangladesh. “We were attacked yesterday, there was no warning, no notice. There are a lot of people who have been injured,” said Haider.

Hundreds of displaced foreign nationals staged a sit-in at the (UNHCR) on 8 October asking the UNHCR to resettle them to a safer country following yet another outbreak of xenophobic violence in late September.

On Wednesday, 30 October, when refugees were removed from the Waldorf arcade, 100 people were arrested, according to the SAPS Western Cape media liaison, Brigadier Novela Potelwa. One of them is JP Balous.

“They beat me, they shot me (with rubber bullets), they pepper sprayed me, I couldn’t see for four to five hours. I lost consciousness and then I woke up in the cell,” said Balous, who added that everyone who was detained was released around 5pm on Wednesday.

Sheryll Dass, an attorney from the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) who helped the displaced foreign nationals who were detained, said the way that the police handled people on Wednesday “was definitely unreasonable and was definitely uncalled for”.

Minister Alan Storey from the Central Methodist Church agreed that police “completely overreacted”.

“They were shooting stun grenades just a few metres from children,” he said.

A 37-year-old refugee from Burundi sits inside Central Methodist Church. Her hand was injured when she was dragged out of St. George’s Mall Waldorf Arcade by law enforcement officers on 30 October 2019. Photo: Sandisiwe Shoba

A 44-year-old woman from Congo who refused to be identified said she was manhandled by the police while carrying a baby on her back. A number of women seated next to her broke down in tears. They said the trauma was unbearable.

A group of medical professionals from the church called the Central Methodist Mission Doctors organised a makeshift clinic to assist those who were injured. St John ambulance also provided care.

One volunteer said they hadn’t counted the number of people they had treated but had been dealing with patients since 2pm the day before. She said a large number of injuries were caused by rubber bullets, pepper spray and beatings.

“One woman was kicked by 10 police officers,” she said. “A few children inhaled pepper spray.”

A 33-year-old mother from Kenya felt there was “no future for her children” in South Africa.

“They can’t go to school because they don’t have birth certificates,” she said. Her daughter is enrolled in school, but she is bullied, the woman explained.

“Some South African kids don’t want to play with my daughter, they call her makwerekwere.”

Sylvie Nahimina, who was lying down in a small room covered with blankets on the floor adjacent to the church pews, said that once everyone had moved their belongings into the church, they checked to see who was there and whether everyone had all their possessions. “As we were checking, we realised that there were children missing. Seven children are missing, the youngest is a seven-month-old baby,” said Nahimina.

She explained that the mothers had been searching for their children the entire night with no success.

A 38-year-old refugee from the Congo, pictured with her two children, sits on the steps of the Central Methodist Church in Greenmarket Square on 31 October 2019. She was part of the occupation group evicted from St. George’s Mall Waldorf Arcade on 30 October 2019 and had not eaten any food since then. Photo: Sandisiwe Shoba (Permission granted to use photograph unedited).

At a meeting with refugees to discuss the way forward Dass said that the LRC was working with the couple who lost their seven-month-old baby.

“(Yesterday) we contacted the Department of Social Development to enquire whether the police had the department of social development at the eviction site. They told us they weren’t. So we need to hold them accountable and ask them why they weren’t there,” said Dass.

Activist Zackie Achmat said it would be helpful if they could ask the parents of the missing children to find pictures of their children to give to the police. Nahimina pointed out that the police had taken their cellphones and wallets, and many parents had probably lost any family photos they had.

Daily Maverick was unable toestablish the names of the children at the time of publication.

Potelwa could not confirm if there were seven missing children. She said she would have to check if a missing person’s case was filed before she could comment.

Nahimina is adamant that she wants the UNHCR to resettle her to a different country.

“UNHCR does not resettle groups of people. They can help resettle individuals but you’d have to be a recognised refugee or the UNHCR would have to determine if you’re a refugee. They’d need to have an in-depth assessment and a protection assessment with the individual,” said the LRC’s Dass.

Achmat said no one would be evicted from the church, but thought that religious groups should come together “to talk about lifting the burden from the Methodist church so that people can sleep better”.

Storey couldn’t give a time line for how long refugees would be sheltered at the church but confirmed there were no plans to move them.

Achmat said they would be lodging a complaint with the Human Rights Commission against police brutality. DM