We’re going nowhere: Somalis
2010-01-28 15:15
THREE Somali men stand around a computer screen in a crammed
internet shop in the Cape Town suburb of Belville, tapping their feet to a music
video.
The screen shows a packed stadium with a crowd of people waving
their hands and dancing in a frenzy as the Somali artist, K’naan, sings a catchy
chorus about growing stronger and finding freedom.
The name of the song is “Waving Flag” and it’s a tune that South
Africans are sure to get to know well in the coming months.
The song has been named the official anthem of the 2010 Soccer
World Cup.
For the men watching it, however, the song has a special
significance.
K’naan was 11-years-old when gunmen opened fire on him and three of
his friends while they were playing on a street in the Somali capital,
Mogadishu. He survived the attack, but all his friends were killed.
The chorus goes: “When I get older . . . I will be stronger . . .
They’ll call me freedom . . . Just like a waving flag . . . ”
It’s about K’naan’s experience after the attack.
One of the men watching the video is Mohammed Osman, a coordinator
of the Somali Association of South Africa, which has its offices annexed to the
computer store.
Osman says many Somalis have had similar experiences to K’naan,
which is why they can relate to the lyrics.
“It is impossible for most people to live a normal life in
Somalia,” he says. “When I was growing up, the country was being run by
warlords. Gangs with guns controlled the streets.”
“That is why the lyrics of a song like this has special meaning for
us.”
Osman decided to leave Somalia in 2003, while he was living with
his mother and father in the town of Kismayu.
“I was studying to finish high school,” he says. “I wanted to make
something of my life.
“I had relatives living in a beautiful, peaceful city called Cape
Town.
“I decided to go there.”
In 2003 Osman, who was then 22, said goodbye to his family and took
a bus to Kenya.
“We were 100 kilometres from the border when the bus stopped and
the driver told us we had to walk the rest of the way,” he recalls.
“The passengers got out and we spent the next days walking across
the border by foot.”
In Kenya, Osman took a bus to Nairobi and from there travelled to
Tanzania where he took a boat down the coast to Mozambique.
“We were at sea, somewhere off the coast of Mozambique and
Tanzania. It was very dark. The captain told us to jump and swim for the shore.
So we jumped into the sea. The water was up to my eyes. It was
terrifying.”
Osman made it to the shore and joined a group of around 30 Somalis
who trekked into Mozambique.
They had barely crossed the border when they were arrested by
Mozambican soldiers and thrown into prison.
“No-one spoke any Somali or any English,” he says. “The Mozambicans
spoke Portuguese. I tried to ask if I could buy water, but no-one could
understand me.”
Osman and the Somalis were held for 35 days without trial. They
were fed one meal a day.
After 30 days, the group decided to go on a hunger strike to demand
a trial. The hunger strike lasted five days before the Mozambicans released them
and deported them to Tanzania. The Tanzanians then deported the group to
Kenya.
Osman stayed in Kenya for two months before he started his journey
again. This time he made it all the way to Cape Town.
“It was (a) difficult journey,” he says. “But the Somali women have
a much worse time. They are raped and attacked the whole way to South Africa. It
is terrible what they have to endure.
Osman worked in a small grocery store in the township of
Masiphumelele, near Cape Town, but it was wasn’t long before the problems
started.
Businessmen in the Cape townships were accusing Somalis of
undercutting and stealing business. Gangs formed and attacked and destroyed the
stores of traders like Osman.
One of the men in the Internet Shop, Ali Sandhere Mohamed, 20, used
to run a small grocery store in the township of Philippi.
“One day a man walked in and asked for cigarettes,” he says. “I
took the money and bent down to get change. When I looked, the man had a pistol.
He put it into my mouth and pulled the trigger.”
The bullet went through Mohamed’s chin and into his collar bone
area where it hit a tendon. His right arm has been paralysed since the
shooting.
Mohamed, whose brother lives in Bloemfontein, was attacked twice
more after that. He lifts his trousers and shows a jagged scar running down his
leg.
“That came from a knife,” he says.
“I want to go home to my parents in Mogadishu. South Africa has not
been good to me. I was never attacked in Mogadishu. But here I have been
attacked three times.”
Osman insists that all business owners have a right to charge
whatever price they like.
“It is a constitutional right,” he says. “If we want to charge a
lower price, then we should be allowed to do that.”
Osman moved to Belville near the Somali mosque on Durban Road,
known widely by Somalis as Mogadishu Avenue.
“I wanted to stay away from the townships,” he says.
It was there that he joined the Somali Association of South Africa,
an organisation that aims to represent and protect Somalis living in South
Africa.
The Somali Association, for which Osman works, tries with the help
of organisations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the
University of Cape Town’s Law Clinic to provide assistance to Somalis living in
South Africa.
“When people need a lawyer we help them to get one,” Osman
says.
The Somali Association has also been facilitating negotiations with
the business owners in Khayelitsha.
The Khayelitsha Somali Retailers was set up after the xenophobic
attacks in 2008.
The efforts have paid off.
“In most instances, Somalis are now working side by side with local
business owners,” Osman says.
“Relations are better than any time before. The people drink
cooldrinks together.”
Late last year, the Cape Town Somali community was hit with more
problems.
The United States embassy received a “credible” intelligence that
Somalis living in the township of Khayelitsha and with links to an al Qaeda
terror cell in Somalia were preparing to attack its buildings in South
Africa.
South African security forces carried out raids on Somali business
owners, but no evidence of a threat was found.
Osman says intelligence agencies were given a false tip-off by a
Pretoria-based academic.
“It was not true at all,” he says. “This man who gave them this tip
must have been paid by someone.
“We are determined to cooperate with the South African government
and police intelligence. If such threats come from Somalis we will be the first
to report it.
“Somalis ran away from violence. We don’t want that here.”
Osman says although they are often victimised by South Africans,
Somalis still think of themselves as proud South Africans.
“We are proud to be part of this country,” he says.
“We are the Somali community of South Africa, like you have the
Indian Community of South Africa.”
He points to Somali men on Durban Road wearing Springbok rugby
jerseys and Bafana Bafana soccer shirts.
“We can’t wait for the World Cup,” he says.
“Somalis have never been able to see great soccer, live.
This is our chance.”
“And we have K’naan who is performing the official song.”
- SAPA