Politics
Dogs and Hawkers Not Allowed: The Brutal Dictatorship of Nairobi’s Predatory ‘Kanjo’ Askaris
11 min read.Nairobi’s City Inspectorate has deviated little from its colonial roots and closely resembles 19th century London’s Metropolitan Police.
In 2013, a university don was “arrested on suspicion of obstructing and assaulting (both emphasis mine) the police” by the Metropolitan Police in north-east London. Her real crime was “offering a 15-year-old boy a legal advice card”. Konstancja Duff, the “culprit”, then lectured at the University of Nottingham. The boy she had helped had been caught “in a stop and search sweep on the Wilton estate in Hackney”. When confronted by the Met police, Duff declined to reveal her identity, which caused the officers to order her into a police van and whisk her to the police station.
Miffed by her refusal to cooperate by refusing to speak to the police, the duty officer at the police station, Sergeant Kurtis Howard, commanded three female custody officers to strip search Duff, whose clothes were cut off with scissors. Reflecting on why she had been arrested, Duff would later record that “I felt like what I had been arrested for was for sticking up for somebody’s legal rights…I had been arrested for offering a-know-your-right card.”
If, for a moment, we were to remove the names of the towns, locations and police stations, the incident described above could as well have taken place in one of the sprawling suburbs of Kenya’s capital city Nairobi. And there would be no argument whatsoever that the behaviour of the Met officers captured here exactly mirror those of the predatory and primordial city askaris.
The similarities in the behaviour and modus operandi of the Met Police of greater London and the Nairobi City Inspectorate city askaris are not coincidental. The Met Police was formed in 1829 by Conservative Party politician Robert Peele primarily, according to the International Centre for the History of Crime, Policing and Justice, to “maintain order, without having to call the aid of the army. A police institution that would be trained to restore order without guns and sabres.”
Peele, who had served as a Home Secretary, may have felt there was a “desire for order and tidiness on the streets of the late 18th and early 19th century cities”. His vision was to have a police force that did not have jurisdiction over the square mile of the wealthy and powerful of the city London, but one that ensured safety and cleanliness around the greater metropolis. This arrangement has existed to date: “Even at the beginning of the 21st century, the city of London still has its own, independent police.”
The Nairobi City Inspectorate, whose askaris are charged with maintaining law and order in the greater metropolis, was modelled on the Met Police, a retired senior city askari reminisced to me recently. “Known by their other name, ‘enforcement officers’, the city askaris are supposed to enforce city by-laws,” he said. “The ‘manual’ on how the city askaris were to go about their duties was imported from London. But while London did away with many obnoxious by-laws, post-independence Nairobi retained many, if not all, colonial by-laws.”
The Met police, which in those early days recruited unruly young men to serve as officers – men who oftentimes reported to work drunk – would beat up Londoners for the flimsiest reasons, though it was professionalised and reformed later. But old habits die hard, as the incident above demonstrates.
The City Inspectorate is a creature of colonial Nairobi, which was made a city in 1904, more than 100 years ago. After World War II, the city askaris were deployed by the British colonial government largely to control the movement of the African male who was employed in the city as migrant labour. The “native” was considered too unsophisticated for the emerging township.
“It is therefore not out of context for the city askari during the colonial times and indeed even in the post-colony to have arrested a native for loitering or walking in a manner and intent to suggest that he was likely to commit a crime or commotion or even cause and create disaffection and disharmony,” the former askari told me. “A white man could stroll in the streets of Nairobi to window shop or walk his pet around, but a native with his dog wandering around the streets was considered a ‘nuisance’.”
The City Inspectorate is a creature of colonial Nairobi, which was made a city in 1904, more than 100 years ago. After World War II, the city askaris were deployed by the British colonial government largely to control the movement of the African male who was employed in the city as migrant labour. The “native” was considered too unsophisticated for the emerging township.
He went on : “The natives who walked around with their ‘mangy’ dogs risked being arrested and their animals confiscated. Many times such dogs would be killed and then dumped in the landfill in Dandora.”
Up to late 1980s, city askaris would be deployed from time to time into the estates in the eastern part of Nairobi armed with collared straps to ensnare and round up “stray” dogs that would be quarantined in the dogs’ section of the Nairobi City Council pound at City Park in the Parklands area. Many of them were put down.
Mercy Muendo, who lectures at the Mount Kenya University, points out that “variations of these rules remain on the books to date. The [Nairobi] County rules demand that dog owners must be licensed…This rule can be read as discriminatory because the vast majority of lower- income earners now find themselves unable to keep a dog in the city.”
After independence in 1963, the work of the Nairobi City Council askari (popularly known as “kanjo”, which is derived from the word Council) was clearly spelt out: stem the movements of the African man on the streets of major towns. Muendo notes that some of the archaic laws that these askaris enforce can be traced back to legal ordinances that were passed by the colonial government between 1923 and 1934. She says that these laws were used to curtail the freedom of movement of and the enjoyment of public spaces by the “native” Africans and to even hinder the growth of the economy.
“To curtail freedom of movement and enjoyment of public spaces by non-whites, the settlers created categories of persons known as ‘vagrants’, ‘vagabonds’, ‘barbarians’, ‘savages’ and ‘Asians’” she writes. An example she offers is the 1925 Vagrancy Ordinance, which after independence became the Vagrancy Act that wasn’t repealed until 1997. The Ordinance “restricted movement of the African after 6pm, especially if they did not have a registered address”.
The law lecturer observes that “anyone found loitering, anyone who was homeless or who was found in the wrong abode, making noise on the wrong streets, sleeping in public or hawking” risked arrest without warrant and imprisonment. The colonial city askari’s main mission, therefore, was to implement the British colonial government’s racial and segregationist policies in urban centres and towns.
However, his post-independence counterpart is a different creature altogether – he is crude and anachronistic and his role is poorly defined. He can be beastly and brutish. Like the Metropolitan Police of early 19th century London, he is unkempt and unruly, uneducated and uncouth, sadistic and savage.
With the vagrancy law gone, the city askari can no longer accost you for loitering on the streets of Nairobi, but he can prefer obstruction and assault charges against you – of course, with the connivance of the duty officer manning the occurrence book (OB) at any of the city’s frightening police stations. It is a story I know too well.
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The year was 2016 and it was around 5.00pm. I had an appointment with Steve Owiti, a street vendor who has supplied me with books and magazine for close to two decades. His bookstand is located next to the Ambassadeur Hotel facing Tom Mboya Street. When I arrived at the bookstand, I found a commotion: street vendors and hawkers were running helter-skelter after they had been ambushed by the vicious city askaris.
With the vagrancy law gone, the city askari can no longer accost you for loitering on the streets of Nairobi, but he can prefer obstruction and assault charges against you – of course, with the connivance of the duty officer manning the occurrence book (OB) at any of the city’s frightening police stations. It is a story I know too well.
As fate would have it, one of the fruit vendors, a girl barely out of her teens who was carrying a baby strapped on her back, was cornered. She was violently shoved by one of the askaris. She fell backwards, pressing the baby on the ground. I could not believe what I was witnessing. So I lost my cool and turned on the askari. For heaven’s sake, I asked him, what on earth did he think he was doing? The young lady had a baby – why did he have to use so much violence arresting her?
Not used to being confronted or even questioned, the askari turned on me, angrily accusing me of meddling in his work. A crowd quickly built up where I was standing and the askari, losing confidence, took off promising to be back. Seconds later, four mean-faced city askaris surrounded me. The crowd had not yet dissipated but now the askaris had a quorum and would not be easily cowed. In the foulest language they could muster, and all four speaking at once, they harangued me: “Hata Uhuru Kenyatta mwenyewe hawezi kuingilia kazi yetu…wewe ndio nani?” (Even [President] Uhuru Kenyatta cannot interfere with our work…so, who do you think you are?) “Leo ndio utajua sisi ni akina nani.” (Today you’ll know who we are), they promised me.
Howling at the indignant crowd to scatter, one of the askaris unleashed a pair of handcuffs and with a show of force, handcuffed my hands and frog-marched me – the other three askaris in tow and swearing – to the waiting City Inspectorate van some 20 metres away. I was bundled into the rear of the van. Apparently, I was the first culprit arrested that evening by this particular squad. They locked me inside and off they went to catch other wajuaji (know-it-alls).
The city askaris that accosted me were part of the infamous gang of four – Brown (Alfred Marenya), Ochi (Julius Ochieng), Sarara (Protus Marigo) and Wasi Wasi (Ambani Akasi). These fearsome four askaris, then as now, were known to carry daggers. In January 2016, the quartet was charged in court with the murder of a street vendor. Street vendors I interviewed told me harrowing stories about the four beating up and knifing traders. Hawkers in Ngara, off Forest Lane, showed me dagger marks on their ribs, thighs and stomachs. They said Irungu Kamau, the hawker the gang of four were accused of murdering, was only one of several they had killed. One street vendor was stabbed right through his anus by one of the four, and for many months, he could not sit up or work. Feared and loathed, the gang of four have generated revulsion among street vendors and hawkers. This I found out when I spent the night at a Central Police Station cell.
Street vendors I interviewed told me harrowing stories about the four beating up and knifing traders. Hawkers in Ngara, off Forest Lane, showed me dagger marks on their ribs, thighs and stomachs.
By 6.30pm, the askaris had rounded up a number of street vendors who could not part with the bribe of between Sh500 and Sh1,000 (either because they could not raise the money or the askaris refused their money – sometimes they do that to punish the stubborn). These vendors were bundled and squeezed alongside me in the van. “Huyo jamaa ata kama yuko na pesa usichukue, lazima alale ndani,” (Even if that man has money, don’t take it, he must spend the night in the cells), said the city askaris. They were referring to me.
“Ofisa, tumekuletea mjuaji… Anaingilia kazi yetu na kujifanya anajua human rights sana. Vile amezuia tukamate mhalifu, wacha yeye sasa alale ndani” (Officer, we’ve brought you a know-it-all…He’s one of those human rights types who won’t let us go about our duties. So, now that he prevented us from arresting a criminal, let him spend the night instead). My name was entered in the OB and the duty officer asked me to remove all my valuables: money, mobile phone, wrist watch and leather belt.
At 7.15pm, we heard the clanking of the heavy padlock on our cell NO. 4. “Tuonane kesho asubuhi” (See you tomorrow morning), howled the policeman on the other side of the metal door as he sauntered away, his voice echoing in the corridor. My cell was packed with street vendors who talked the whole night. We became friends. They asked why I was in there with them. I told them what had happened. My story evoked much laughter – not directed at me but at the whole rigmarole of my arrest. “Hao makanjo unajua ni makreki – si watu wa poa. Ukiwaona unawatia zii” (City askaris are crazy, they are wicked people, avoid them when you see them), my new comrades counselled me.
It is from these street vendors that I learned of the callousness and viciousness of the archetypal city “kanjo” askari and the apparent impunity he exhibits as he forcefully demands bribes. Failure to pay up leads to a violent beating. One time, they narrated, Brown and Co. boasted to them that they could kill or maim without fear of the law. “Tungepewa bunduki ndio mungetutambua” (If only we were armed, we’d teach you [street vendors] a lesson), they had been warned.
I asked them why the askaris were such a reviled powerful force on the streets of Nairobi. “Wewe unafikiri mabigi wa Inspectorate wanamanga aje? Hawa makanjo si ndio wanawapelekea mkwanja” (How do you think the City Inspectorate bosses line their pockets? The askari is the conduit for the fat bribes). Apparently, the predatory networks run by askaris on the streets of Nairobi go all the way up to City Hall Annex, the main offices of the City Inspectorate.
The “kanjo” askaris have been accused of sexual assault and rape of female hawkers. To peddle their wares without harassment, some hawkers are even forced to have sex with the askaris; some of these women end up pregnant or infected with HIV. “The askaris don’t care that some of their victims could be married,” said the vendors, “and the women dare not report to anybody because the askaris are so dangerous”.
The vendors also had their own “triumphant” stories to share and laugh about. Kang’ethe had been a malevolent and nasty “kanjo” who used to beat up street vendors on the slightest provocation, rob them of their stuff, and strut around like a sheriff around town. So the street vendors bid their time, waiting for an opportune moment to strike back. When he was spotted walking alone on Mfangano Lane, the back street behind Njogu-ini Bar and Restaurant, the hawkers and vendors quickly set upon him, beating him to a pulp and leaving him for dead. “It is truly shocking that Kange’the didn’t die,” said the vendors.
The “kanjo” askaris have been accused of sexual assault and rape of female hawkers. To peddle their wares without harassment, some hawkers are even forced to have sex with the askaris; some of these women end up pregnant or infected with HIV.
Kang’ethe’s story, told inside the police cell, confirmed to me the dangerous relationship that exists between the city askari and the street trader. “Since Kang’ethe’s narrow escape from death, the askaris never walk alone and avoid the alleyways and backstreets where they can easily be waylaid,” the vendors surmised. Later, I learned that Kange’the had been rescued by fellow askaris and had a long stay in hospital where he nursed life-long injuries. When he was back on his feet, his bosses at City Hall Annex transferred him to Mombasa Road, far from the “murderous” vendors. He was lucky to have survived, but his face bears the scars of his ordeal.
At 9.00am the next morning, a police truck parked directly at the entrance of the station and all the “criminals” were asked to file past the OB office to collect their items before they entered the truck. At the City Hall magistrate’s court, we were sequestered in the basement, waiting to be read our charges. It is there that a court clerk, dressed in a City Inspectorate askari uniform, came to me. “My friend, why are you here?” It was obvious I was an oddity: I could not have been a hawker.
“I was arrested by the askaris.”
“What happened?”
“I was caught up in a street vendors’ melee.”
“Listen my brother, I’ve been an askari for more than 35 years and I’ll be retiring soon. But I want to give you a piece of advice. Please take it for your own good. I know what happened. – you must have challenged the askaris when they were arresting the vendors? Never ever get in their way. Those people are murderous; they are ill-educated and they have the instincts of a predator – the can easily kill you, especially a person like you, who takes them on their turf. Their poor education makes them dangerously bad. Please, I implore you, when next you see them, take a different vector. Avoid them completely.”
The magistrate came late, so we had time to chat in the basement. “You must understand this creature called the city askari,” opined the court clerk. “He is not a professionally trained security officer, neither is he exactly your normal City Council civil service employee. He has scant education, if any education at all. He got employed because he proved himself to be one of the baddest boys in a councillor’s campaign team. Oftentimes, he is himself is a criminal and has spent some time in police custody or even in jail.”
The court clerk said the city askaris became even more violent when the Inspectorate acquiesced to their demand to not wear uniforms, because, ostensibly, uniforms were hampering their work. The argument was simple: for them to successfully execute their mission – of arresting street vendors – they needed to be incognito. The uniform was giving them away. It was an irrationality that the City Inspectorate bosses quickly bought into.
“It was the gravest mistake that the City Inspectorate did: it now gave the askaris carte blanche to be even more ruthless, to murder and maim. And as if that was not bad enough, it becomes impossible for the Inspectorate to differentiate the criminal elements from the good askaris. At one time, the askaris even had the audacity to propose that they be afforded firearms, presumably because the street vendors were becoming increasingly rebellious and difficult to control and tame.” (The askaris, of course, were not be allowed to carry guns, but when they started carrying knives, the City Inspectorate looked the other way.)
The lady magistrate finally showed up. And when she called my name, she looked at me above the frame of her glasses to suggest: “Look, I am just doing my job”. I was charged with three offences: Obstructing, assaulting and fighting the askaris. I paid a total fine of Sh4,500 – Sh1,500 for each offence – and was released.
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Politics
The Repression of Palestine Solidarity in Kenya
Kenya is one of Israel’s closest allies in Africa. But the Ruto-led government isn’t alone in silencing pro-Palestinian speech.
Israel has been committing genocide against the people of Occupied Palestine for 75 years and this has intensified over the last 30 days with the merciless carpet bombing of Gaza, along with raids and state-sanctioned settler violence in the West Bank. In the last month of this intensified genocide, the Kenyan government has pledged its solidarity to Israel, even as the African Union released a statement in support of Palestinian liberation. While peaceful marches have been successfully held in Kisumu and Mombasa, in Nairobi, Palestine solidarity organizers were forced to cancel a peaceful march that was to be held at the US Embassy on October 22. Police threatened that if they saw groups of more than two people outside the Embassy, they would arrest them. The march was moved to a private compound, Cheche Bookshop, where police still illegally arrested three people, one for draping the Palestinian flag around his shoulders. Signs held by children were snatched by these same officers.
When Boniface Mwangi took to Twitter denouncing the arrest, the response by Kenyans spoke of the success of years of propaganda by Israel through Kenyan churches. To the Kenyan populous, Palestine and Palestinians are synonymous with terrorism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine is its right. However, this Islamophobia and xenophobia from Kenyans did not spring from the eternal waters of nowhere. They are part of the larger US/Israel sponsored and greedy politician-backed campaign to ensure Kenyans do not start connecting the dots on Israel’s occupation of Palestine with the extra-judicial killings by Kenyan police, the current occupation of indigenous people’s land by the British, the cost-of-living crisis and the IMF debts citizens are paying to fund politician’s lavish lifestyles.
Kenya’s repression of Palestine organizing reflects Kenya’s long-standing allyship with Israel. The Kenyan Government has been one of Israel’s A-star pupils of repression and is considered to be Israel’s “gateway” to Africa. Kenya has received military funding and training from Israel since the 60s, and our illegal military occupation of Somalia has been funded and fueled by Israel along with Britain and the US. Repression, like violence, is not one dimensional; repression does not just destabilize and scatter organizers, it aims to break the spirit and replace it instead with apathy, or worse, a deep-seated belief in the rightness of oppression. In Israel’s architecture of oppression through repression, the Apartheid state has created agents of repression across many facets of Kenyan life, enacting propaganda, violence, race, and religion as tools of repression of Palestine solidarity organizing.
When I meet with Naomi Barasa, the Chair of the Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement, she begins by placing Kenya’s repression of Palestine solidarity organizing in the context of Kenya as a capitalist state. “Imperialism is surrounded and buffered by capitalistic interest,” she states, then lists on her fingers the economic connections Israel has created with Kenya in the name of “technical cooperation.” These are in agriculture, security, business, and health; the list is alarming. It reminds me of my first memory of Israel (after the nonsense of the promised land that is)—about how Israel was a leader in agricultural and irrigation technologies. A dessert that flowed with milk and honey.
Here we see how propaganda represses, even before the idea of descent is born: Kenyans born in the 1990s grew up with an image of a benign, prosperous, and generous Christian Israel that just so happened to be unfortunate enough to be surrounded by Muslim states. Israel’s PR machine has spent 60 years convincing Kenyan Christians of the legitimacy of the nation-state of Israel, drawing false equivalences between Christianity and Zionism. This Janus-faced ideology was expounded upon by Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Michel Lotem, when he said “Religiously, Kenyans are attached to Israel … Israel is the holy land and they feel close to Israel.” The cog dizzy of it all is that Kenyan Christians, fresh from colonialism, are now Africa’s foremost supporters of colonialism and Apartheid in Israel. Never mind the irony that in 1902, Kenya was the first territory the British floated as a potential site for the resettlement of Jewish people fleeing the pogroms in Europe. This fact has retreated from public memory and public knowledge. Today, churches in Kenya facilitate pilgrimages to the holy land and wield Islamophobia as a weapon against any Christian who questions the inhumanity of Israel’s 75-year Occupation and ongoing genocide.
Another instrument of repression of pro-Palestine organizing in Kenya is the pressure put on Western government-funded event spaces to decline hosting pro-Palestine events. Zahid Rajan, a cultural practitioner and organizer, tells me of his experiences trying to find spaces to host events dedicated to educating Kenyans on the Palestinian liberation struggle. He recalls the first event he organized at Alliance Français, Nairobi in 2011. Alliance Français is one of Nairobi’s cultural hubs and regularly hosts art and cultural events at the space. When Zahid first approached Alliance to host a film festival for Palestinian films, they told him that they could not host this event as they already had (to this day) an Israeli film week. Eventually, they agreed to host the event with many restrictions on what could be discussed and showcased. Unsurprisingly they refused to host the event again. The Goethe Institute, another cultural hub in Kenya that offers its large hall for free for cultural events, has refused to host the Palestinian film festival or any other pro-Palestine event. Both Alliance and Goethe are funded by their parent countries, France and Germany respectively (which both have pro-Israel governments). There are other spaces and businesses that Zahid has reached out to host pro-Palestine education events that have, in the end, backtracked on their agreement to do so. Here, we see the evolution of state-sponsored repression to the private sphere—a public-private partnership on repression, if you will.
Kenya’s members of parliament took to heckling and mocking as a tool of repression when MP Farah Maalim wore an “Arafat” to Parliament on October 25. The Speaker asked him to take it off stating that it depicted “the colors of a particular country.” When Maalim stood to speak he asked: “Tell me which republic,” and an MP in the background could be heard shouting “Hamas” and heckling Maalim, such that he was unable to speak on the current genocide in Gaza. This event, seen in the context of Ambassador Michael Lotem’s charm offensive at the county and constituency level, is chilling. His most recent documented visit was to the MP of Kiharu, Ndindi Nyoro, on November 2. The Israeli propaganda machine has understood the importance of County Governors and MPs in consolidating power in Kenya.
Yet, in the face of this repression, we have seen what Naomi Barasa describes as “many pockets of ad hoc solidarity,” as well as organized solidarity with the Palestinian cause. We have seen Muslim communities gather for many years to march for Palestine, we have seen student movements such as the Nairobi University Student Caucus release statements for Palestine, and we have seen social justice centers such as Mathare Social Justice Centre host education and screening events on Palestinian liberation. Even as state repression of Palestine solidarity organizing has intensified in line with the deepening of state relations with Apartheid Israel, more Kenyans are beginning to connect the dots and see the reality that, as Mandela told us all those years ago, “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.”
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.
Politics
Only Connect: Human Beings Must Connect to Survive
We must fight to remain human, to make connections across borders, race, religion, class, gender, and all the false divisions that exist in our world. We must show solidarity with one another, and believe we can construct another kind of world.
24 November 2021. We wake to the news that 27 migrants have drowned in the English Channel.
“Stop the boats!” cry the Tories. It’s the hill British Prime Minister Sunak has chosen to die on. But there is no political will to stop the wider crisis of global migration, driven by conflict, poverty, persecution, repressive regimes, famine, climate change, and the rest. Moreover, there is zero understanding that the West is behind many of the reasons why people flee their homes in the first place. Take Afghanistan, a useless Allied war that went nowhere. It left the Taliban more powerful than ever. Afghans who worked for the British army, betrayed when our forces pulled out. Now they make up the majority of cross-Channel migrants.
Not for them the welcome we gave Ukrainians. Wrong skin colour, maybe? Wrong religion? Surely not.
Some right-wingers rejoice at news of these deaths. “Drown ’em all!” they cry on social media. “Bomb the dinghies!” There are invariably photos of cute cats and dogs in their profiles. Have you noticed how much racists and fascists love pets? Lots of ex-servicemen among them, who fail to see the link between the failed wars they fought, and the migration crisis these spawned. The normalisation of a false reality is plain to see. Politicians and the media tell folk that black is white, often in meaningless three-word slogans, and the masses believe it. Migrants, especially those who arrive in small boats, are routinely labelled criminals, murderers, rapists, invaders, Muslims intent on imposing Islam on the UK, and “young men of fighting age”, which implies that they are a standing army.
If you bother to look beyond the stereotypes, the reality is very different.
One couple’s story
Riding those same waves, a year or so later, are two Iranian Kurds. A young couple. Let’s call them Majid and Sayran. They have sadly decided not to have children, in 12 years of marriage, because they believe Iran is no place to bring up children. Activists who oppose the regime, they were forced to flee after receiving direct threats. They ran an environmental NGO, and held Kurdish cultural events that are banned in Iran.
The husband, Majid, a writer, first fled to Iraq in 2021. He and his wife were parted for 18 months. She eventually joined him in a Kurdish area of Iraq. They were forced to flee again, when the Iranian regime bombed the homes and offices of political dissidents in Iraq, killing and wounding many of their friends. They decided their only hope was to head for Britain via Turkey, Italy and France. They paid people smugglers around USD30,000 in total. They eventually ended up in a hotel in my home town. Their story continues below.
Feeling powerless
Meanwhile, there I am sitting at home in the UK, getting more and more enraged about my government’s attitude and policies on immigration. I feel powerless. I think about refugees living in an asylum hotel in my town. I’m told many of them are Muslim, now trying to celebrate Ramadan. I picture them breaking their fasts on hotel food, which relies heavily on chips and other cheap junk. I meet some of them in the queue at the town’s so-called community fridge, where I used to volunteer. I chat a little to Majid, who can speak some English. I try to find out why they are there. The “fridge” gives out food donated by supermarkets to anyone in need. The food would otherwise be thrown away because it’s about to reach its sell-by date. The refugees go there, they tell me, to get fresh stuff because the hotel food is so awful. I can sense the growing resentment from locals in the queue, who want to put “Britain first”.
Thinking, thinking. Then I berate myself. I should take action, however small. Get down to the supermarket, buy food for, say, six families. I can’t feed everyone, but let’s start somewhere. Food that people from the Middle East (the majority of the hotel residents) will like. Hummus, flatbreads, dates, olives, nuts, rice. Divide it into six bags. I don’t know how I will be received (I feel rather nervous), but let’s give it a go.
I can sense the growing resentment from locals in the queue, who want to put “Britain first”.
The hotel manager is cagey. (I am later banned. He and his female head of security are rude and hostile, but that’s still to come.) For now, he lets me in to distribute the food. Luckily, I spot Majid, just the person I’m looking for. I recognise him from the “fridge” queue. He can translate for the others, who quickly gather in the lobby. The food is snatched within minutes, people are delighted with it. (It turns out Majid and his wife are atheists. But they get some food too.)
I didn’t do this for the thanks. But I’m glad I made that first move. Taking it further, I invite them both round for a meal. I spend hours making Persian rice, it’s a big hit. My new friends fall on the spread like ravening wolves. One thing leads to another. We start to meet regularly. It helps that they have some English, which greatly improves as the weeks pass and they go to classes. They are thrilled by everyday things – walks in the country, pizza, a local fair, being taken to see the film Oppenheimer. (“We were amazed to see so many British people go to the movies!”) They tell me they are delighted simply to make contact, to see how ordinary people live, to be invited into my, and my friends’ homes. I tell them I have plenty to learn from them, too. We get a bit tearful. I say hi to Sayran’s mum on the phone in Iran. We also laugh a lot. Majid has a black sense of humour.
At first, I don’t ask about their experience of crossing the Channel. All I know is that the entire journey, from Iran to Britain, was deeply traumatic. Until now, months later, when I ask Majid to describe what happened.
Majid picks up the story of their journey in Turkey: “The most bitter memories of my life were witnessing my wife’s tiredness, fear and anxiety as we walked for nine hours to reach Istanbul. I saw my wife cry from exhaustion and fear many times, and I myself cried inside. In a foreign country without a passport, our only hope was luck, and our only way was to accept hardship because we had no way back. The most bitter thing in this or any refugee journey is that no one gives any help or support to his fellow traveller. The smallest issue turns into a big tension.”
To reach the sea, where they would take a boat to Italy, they walked through dense pine forests. “There were about 30 of us in this group and none of us knew each other. We passed through the forest with extreme anxiety and fear of being arrested by the ruthless Turkish police. We were all afraid that some babies who were tied tightly on their father’s shoulders would cry and the police would find us. But as soon as we stepped into the forest, all the children became silent due to their instinct and sense of danger. They didn’t make a single sound all the way. We were in the forest for about 12 hours, and reached the beach by 8 a.m. Here we were joined by several other groups of refugees; by now we were more than 100 people.”
The week-long journey to Italy in a 12-meter “pleasure” boat carrying 55 people was terrifying. “As the boat moved towards the deep parts of the sea, fear and anxiety took over everyone. The fear of the endless sea, and worse, the fear of being caught by Turkish patrols, weighed heavily on everyone’s mind. The boat moved at the highest speed at night, and this speed added to the intensity of the waves hitting the hull of the boat. Waves, waves, waves have always been a part of the pulse of travellers. As the big waves moved the boat up and down, the sound of screams and shouts would merge with the Arabic words of prayers of old, religious passengers. I can say that there is no scene in hell more horrific than this journey. It was near sunset when several passengers shouted: ‘Land! Land!’”
On the way to France, they somehow lost their backpacks. All their possessions gone. Moving fast forward, they found themselves in yet another forest, this time close to the French coast.
“For the first time, I felt that the whole idea I had about Europe and especially the French was a lie. Nowhere in the underdeveloped and insecure countries of the Middle East would a couple be driven to the wrong address at night, in the cold, without proper clothing. But what can be done when you illegally enter a country whose language you do not know? It was almost 2 o’clock in the morning. The sound of the wind and the trees reminded us of horror scenes in the movies. It was hard to believe that we were so helpless in a European country on that dark, cold and rainy night.” He collected grass and tree leaves to make a “warm and soft nest. I felt like we were two migratory birds that had just arrived in this forest.” Eventually they found what they were looking for – a refugee camp. The next step was to try and cross the Channel.
“I can say that there is no scene in hell more horrific than this journey.”
“We reached the beach. The sky was overcast and it was almost sunset. A strange fear and deadly apprehension gripped all the poor refugees in that space between the sky, the earth and the sea.” A smugglers’ car brought a dinghy and dumped it on the beach before quickly driving away. It was no better than a rubber tube. The refugees filled it with air, and attached a small engine. “They stuck 55 people in that tube.” The dinghy went round in circles and ended up on another part of the French coast. Many people decided to disembark at this point, leaving 18 passengers.
“Women and children were wailing and crying. The children looked at the sea dumbfounded. Men argued with each other and sometimes arguments turned into fights. The boat was not balanced. I was writhing in pain from headaches, while my wife’s face was yellow and pale because of the torment.”
At last a ship approached, shining bright floodlights at the dinghy. It belonged to the British coast guard. “When they threw the life rope towards our plastic boat, we were relieved that we were saved from death.”
Hotel life
My friends tell me about conditions at the hotel. Grim. Food that is often inedible, especially for vegetarians like them. They send me photos of soya chunks and chips. Residents are banned from cooking in their rooms, or even having a fridge. Majid and Sayran have sneaked in a rice steamer and something to fry eggs on. (They have to hide them when the cleaners come round.) Kids have no toys and nowhere to play except in the narrow corridors. Everyone is depressed and bored, waiting for months, sometimes years, to hear the result of their asylum claims.
Majid takes up the story: “Due to the lack of toys and entertainment, the boys gather around the security guards and help them in doing many small tasks. The image of refugee children going to school on cold and rainy mornings is the most painful image of refugees in this developed country. In schools, language problems make refugee children isolated and depressed in the first few years. What can be the situation of a pregnant woman, or a woman whose baby has just been born, with an unemployed husband, and poor nutrition, in a very small room in this hotel? Imagine yourself. Many elderly people here suffer from illnesses such as rheumatism, knee swelling, and high blood sugar. But many times when they ask for a change in the food situation or request to transfer somewhere else, they are ridiculed by the hotel staff. One day, a widow who had no food left for her and was given frozen food, went to the hotel management office with her daughter to protest. But one of the security guards took the food container from this woman’s hand and threw it on the office floor in front of her child. Now that little girl is afraid and hates all the security.”
“When they threw the life rope towards our plastic boat, we were relieved that we were saved from death.”
Yet racists rant about migrants living it up in five-star hotels costing the taxpayer £8 million a day. They don’t think or care about how we got here: the Tories let the asylum backlog soar, by failing to process asylum claims in a timely fashion. Some of us cynically wonder if this was deliberate. The number of people awaiting an initial decision is now 165,411. This compares to 27,048 asylum applications, including dependents, between January and September 2015, before the UK left the European Union.
I’ve done what I can. Lobbied the Home office to improve the food and conditions. I eventually got a reply, both from them and the catering contractor. Wrote to my MP, local councillors, inter-agency bodies that monitor conditions in hotels, migrant organisations, the press. We have had some success. There is a lot more to do.
I ask my friends if the threat of being deported to Rwanda (a key plank of the UK’s asylum policy) might have deterred them from coming. Or if anything would have stopped them. Majid replies: “Not at all! Because everywhere in this world is better than Iran for life. Especially for me, I have a deep problem with the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They threatened me with death over the phone.”
Making sense of the world
World news has become unbearable to read, watch or listen to. Once a news junkie, I increasingly find myself switching off. I’m equally appalled by the widespread apathy, even among friends who were once politically engaged. Then there is all the dog whistling our government does, in language that echoes that of the far right. Ministers and MPs have shamelessly whipped up suspicion, hatred, and fear of the Other. “Cruella” Braverman was one of the worst offenders, but at least she is no longer Home Secretary. Her “dream” of deporting refugees to Rwanda (her words) has become a nightmare for Sunak. Both are of East African Asian heritage.
Ministers and MPs have shamelessly whipped up suspicion, hatred, and fear of the Other.
This may sound trite, but we must struggle to remain human, and make connections where we can – across borders, race, religion, class, gender, all the false divisions that exist in our world. We have to keep lobbying those in power, and going on protest marches. We must show solidarity with one another. We have to believe we can construct another kind of world, pole pole, from the bottom up. A kinder world would help, for starters. It can begin in very small ways.
Politics
Solidarity Means More Than Words
Although the South African government is one of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause, its actions tell a different story.
On October 15 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, decked in a black and white keffiyeh, pledged his solidarity with the people of Palestine. He was surrounded by colleagues in the same attire holding Palestine flags. This was a week after Israel began its bombardment of the Gaza strip. The situation in Gaza is an even worse nightmare than usual, with the death toll from Israeli strikes now exceeding 11,000 civilians, half of whom are children. Much of the open-air prison housing more than two million people has been reduced to rubble. South Africa’s already critical rhetoric on Israel has become significantly harsher, but the question being asked is, when will this translate into action?
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has stood unfailingly with Palestine, beginning with the close friendship and camaraderie between former president Nelson Mandela and Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) at the time of Mandela’s release from prison in 1990. South Africa was one of the first countries to refer to Israel as an apartheid state, a progressive stance at the state level, even in Africa.
Yet the current government’s bravery, even in diplomacy, is questionable. The pro-Palestine public and civil society are demanding answers to basic questions, such as why Israeli citizens can travel to South Africa visa-free, while Palestinians cannot. And although South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel in 2018, downgrading the embassy to a liaison office, it has yet to take the step to expel the Israeli ambassador to South Africa.
But things are shifting. Israel has acted with such violence that South Africa’s language has grown stronger to the point that the Cabinet called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza not just a genocide but a “holocaust on the Palestinians.” After a month of civil society and public pressure on the government to expel Eliav Belotsercovsky, Israel’s Ambassador to South Africa, Ramaphosa recalled South African diplomats in Tel Aviv for “consultations,” and Naledi Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, has called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest and try Netanyahu and his Cabinet for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Notwithstanding these diplomatic maneuvers, the expulsion of Belotserkovsky is still in discussion at the parliamentary level, and in practice, the relationship between Israel and South Africa is in contradiction. South Africa is Israel’s biggest trade partner on the African continent. In 2021, South Africa exported $225 million worth of goods to Israel, mostly in the form of capital goods (tangible assets or resources used in the production of consumer goods), machinery and electrical products, and chemicals; it paid $60 million for imports, mostly intermediate goods (goods used to finalize partially finished consumer goods), and food products by far, making a total in trade of $285 million. This is one-third of Israel’s total trade with sub-Saharan Africa of $760 million.
In 2012, the government announced that products made in the West Bank need to be labeled as originating in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as opposed to a “Product of Israel,” which led to an outcry from Zionist groups and the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, calling the move discriminatory and divisive. But several Checkers and Spar branches still stock items labeled “Product of Israel,” with no repercussions.
Zionist entities have for decades been openly committing crimes under South African law. South African nationals have traveled to Israel to fight in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and some are there currently. This is illegal under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act which is very clear about citizens fighting under other flags. A South African citizen may not provide military assistance to a foreign army unless they have made an application to the Minister of Defence and received their approval. When the issue was raised at a recent parliamentary hearing, Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, admitted that the State Security Agency is aware of this phenomenon, and would provide the identities of these soldiers to the National Prosecuting Authority, as they are a threat to the State. Yet the fact that South Africans have been fighting in the Israeli army is no secret. Recently, a video emerged of a soldier leading other soldiers in South Africa’s national anthem. Another question being asked yet again is, why has it taken this long for any prosecutions to take place or even be suggested?
In July a group of Israeli water experts and state officials visited South Africa to pitch their technology to the South African government, a trip organized by the Jewish National Fund of South Africa and the South African Zionist Federation. The Jewish National Fund is notorious for planting forests on former Palestinian villages demolished by the Israeli army. Israel and South Africa are also connected in the agriculture sphere and South Africa is not alone in this. Israel had been using agriculture and military training to carve an increasingly wider economic path to make its way through Africa, and in 2021 Israel nearly obtained observer status at the African Union, a proposal suspended by South Africa and Algeria’s protests.
The Paramount Group, an arms manufacturer with offices and factories in Cape Town and Johannesburg, is strongly connected to the Israeli army, providing armored vehicles to Haifa-based Elbit Systems, who in turn supplies Israel with 85% of its land-based and drone equipment. The founder, Ivor Ichikowitz, is an outspoken Zionist whose family foundation has been known to raise funds to support the IDF and Paramount’s Vice President for Europe, Shane Cohen, was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Army. Ichikowitz has been allied with prominent South African politicians for many years. In 2009 the Mail and Guardian reported that Ichikowitz had flown Jacob Zuma to Lebanon and Kazakhstan for free on his personal jet. He was also, bizarrely, a broker in a peace mission by African heads of state, including Ramaphosa, to Ukraine in June this year. By allowing for these sales to Elbit, South Africa is violating its own commitment to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty of 2014, which, as a signatory, has agreed to cease the provision of weaponry when there is a reasonable expectation that such arms might be employed in severe breaches of international human rights or humanitarian law.
The South African government has been quietly allowing its own laws to be flouted by Israeli and Zionist interests. But pressure is mounting on the government’s need to convert its narrative into action. Minister Pandor has called for an immediate imposition of an arms embargo on Israel. Does this mean the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) will prohibit Paramount sales to Elbit? The country’s National Prosecuting Authority has been instructed to prosecute South Africans serving in the IDF. Will this actually happen? Will the DTI stop stores from selling products incorrectly labeled and will South Africa cut trade ties with Israel and impose Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)?
Momentum has grown, and people are raging against the machine. The South African government is in the spotlight. It will be forced to show where its red lines are drawn and where its allegiance really lies. The people are watching.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.
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