SAYIDI Noah seemed unsettled as hands, stained from the general contract work he said he does, pulled the hood of his jacket over his cap, the rim of which slightly covered his downcast eyes. He and his countrymen were readying themselves for a photograph after an interview in which they spoke about the pain that has cut deep since xenophobia reared its ugly head again, in the wake of rising social tensions linked to anti-immigrant protests throughout the country.

Howard Mohamed, who hardly breathed a word during the interview but kept a stern and straight face, uneasily inched closer to Noah, as if to allow room for Precious James to fit in the frame.

The three said they are from Malawi but live in Mhlasini in Verulam, and that for just over a week, they have been travelling to New Germany, Durban, for general contract work, which includes plastering and painting.

James, who eagerly engaged in the interview and at times doubled up as a translator for his peers, said they have been working for their current employer for almost a month, doing jobs mainly in Verulam.

James said he has been in South Africa for five years and that his “papers”, a work visa, expired about a month ago.

“I need money to fix my papers. I am still saving some money. I will make a plan to renew my papers,” James said guardedly.

Speaking through James, Mohamed said he has been in the country for just over a year, without the required documents.

Noah’s cement dust-covered hand, in which the fingers held a cigarette compressed by the heavy drags he had taken, trembled as he said he had no papers either, and had been in South Africa for about four years and five months.

Mohamed and James were in agreement with Noah that what had made them decide to leave their home country for South Africa was a need to fight poverty.

“There are some jobs in Malawi but it is not like here in South Africa, where there are more opportunities,” said James.

Noah struggled with a nervous stutter and non-fluent IsiZulu as he spoke about the derogatory names foreign nationals are called by and which have been amplified in the recent “noise”.

“But we are all the same. We are all black,” asserted Noah.

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They were of one opinion that being called by these names causes a deep, numbing pain.

“But I accept it because I can’t do anything about it because I am a foreigner. If I were to respond, something bad could happen to me. I could be beaten up or even killed,” said a defeated James.

Noah said he felt helpless after he was allegedly assaulted recently by a South African who had purportedly confronted him for speaking his mother tongue with a friend from back home.

“We were on our way to the shops when it happened. After hitting me, he called me a Shangane,” said Noah, with all three of them nodding in agreement that reporting the incident to the police would have been futile and posed the risk of being held in custody by the officers.

Noah, James and Mohamed said with June 30 looming, a date that has been widely interpreted as a deadline for undocumented immigrants to leave South Africa, they will eventually return back home but were just biding their time until the number of Malawian nationals camping in Sherwood has drastically gone down as deportations continued.

“But we are also still working to save money so that if we miss those buses, we can pay for our own travels,” said James.

According to him, a bus ticket home costs an estimated R3 500 but for a person who is undocumented, “transporters” charge around R5 500 to get one home, a fee that includes making arrangements for “papers” to cross borders.

The trio said they are not certain whether they will return to South Africa once the dust has settled.

“When we get home, we will try to make a living in whatever way we can,” said James, who added that he has spent some time in Tanzania and Zambia but had only experienced xenophobia in South Africa.

“If God is real, then he should avenge us,” said Mohamed with a stony expression, while Noah concurred.

James said he wished for peaceful co-existence between foreign nationals and South Africans, and that he hoped the latter lot would eventually be overwhelmed by a guilty conscience and act in a more restrained, tolerant manner.

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