Blue Waters “Internally Displaced Persons” Camp closed last Monday, the 6th, the High Court in Western Cape Province having signed an eviction order.

We should have been at the de Doorns refugee camp, about two hours away where 1,500 people live. But monitors have been forbidden to enter the camp to observe the conditions there. Ironically, Bram the director of Passop, is still allowed in, but one man can’t do a monitoring project for human rights all by himself and the authorities at de Doorns know that. Who exactly called this order is a bit of a mystery.

About 200 people still live at Blue Waters. They refuse to move, saying that the surrounding townships are too dangerous. Some even hold the fantastic hope that they will be transferred to Canada. No one really knows where those who have left have gone. Many are likely homeless.

So far the authorities have been judicious with the refugees at blue Waters. The camp is to be closed, but the police haven’t forcibly removed them yet with tear gas. I don’t pretend to know all the political complexities behind these issues.

The term “internally displaced” is a bit of a misnomer. While the people there were indeed displaced by Xenophobic violence in may 2008, they are originally from other sub-saharan African countries. The situation there is a bit better than de Doorns.

Yesterday I went with PASSOP to the Blue Waters Camp. We arrived in the evening and we told by the police that because of the darkness we could not tour the site. Instead, we spent part of the night in the township visiting the head of the local PASSOP branch and in a shebeen in someone’s house in the township, a rather interesting and neat experience.