“Our common enemy is ignorance, the poverty of our mind,” Christophe Nyankurubike, the Burundian refugee, smilingly tells me. “We are prisoners of our assumptions… only when we know each other will we live in harmony.” Though, in the mid- 1990s, this maths teacher’s wisdom was antithetical to both the Hutu and the Tutsi warring parties in Burundi.
I met Nyankurubike on a calm, clear, sunny autumn day in Cape Town as the dark tempest of xenophobic violence flared yet again across South Africa, this time with Durban as the epicentre of our inhumanity. I wanted to understand his experience of xenophobia, not only in this country but also in several others he has journeyed through.
As we talked, I was reminded of my own painful childhood stories of my paternal grandfather’s death – killed in the January 1949 xenophobic convulsion in Durban. He was a simple worker who lived for his music, playing the soul-touching music of the sarangi (an Indian bowed lute) at weddings and other community events. I also remembered the story of my dad and his family – saved by the bravery of their unflinching “coloured” neighbour who stood her ground at their front door against the might of a ferocious group of armed men with spears and bush knives.
Our cruelty to each other has no bounds – it is universal.
This story is of a positive life force… the story of Papa Chris – the endearing and respectful name Cape Town’s black township school pupils bestowed upon this extraordinary human being, Christophe Nyankurubike. Though his official government status is that of a refugee, after living in South Africa for 14 years.
In 1994, each ethnic group’s combatants asked him the foreboding question: “Are you a Hutu or a Tutsi?” There was no simple answer for Nyankurubike. His father was Hutu and his mother Tutsi. He solemnly tells me: “I did not choose what I was born as. I am human, a Christian, a teacher, a child of God” – that’s what I told them. His Tutsi physical features, especially his nose, an ethnic death marker in Burundi, and later in the southern African refugee camps, was the cross that Nyankurubike had to bear from the start of the ethnic conflict. Both Hutu and Tutsi deathmongers hunted him; his house was burnt to the ground; his father-in-law was stoned to death during the “Ghost Town Operation”, thousands of lives were lost. Tutsi and Hutu neighbours and friends had turned into each other’s adversaries.
Papa Chris decided not to take sides in the conflict. A Tutsi gang called Sans Echec (Without Fail) approached him to join their death and destruction campaign (identifying him as a Tutsi because of his facial features); while the Hutu rebel movement, the Front pour la Defence de la Democratie (FDD) demanded he made financial contributions to their cause. Two of his close colleagues were killed for supporting the FDD.
Together with others, he stopped many people from entering areas where the terror of Operation Ghost Town was in progress. In May 1994 he joined a reconciliation group in an effort to bring together the two ethnic groups. At the first meeting, attended by the prime minister and government ministers, Papa Chris courageously stepped up and spoke against the senseless killings and the need for understanding and forgiveness. He challenged the political leaders, critical of a minister for using the Tutsi youth for his own interests. He and other Hutus provided the names of the gang leaders responsible for the attacks in their areas.
Sombrely reflecting on that event, Papa Chris says: “I spoke my heart out… I learnt that truth is a dangerous weapon… The Tutsi-dominated army and Sans Echec hunted down all those Hutus who provided names, including me. Those in power do not like to hear the truth when it is not in their interest.”
His life was shattered, the fragments of this once convivial landscape were an unfathomable nightmare for the peace-loving teacher. Terrifying. Rivers of hatred swelled with the blood of brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours, merciless in their path of devastation. His people’s malevolence seemed to have no boundaries.
Papa Chris’ spirit was crying out for life and love: “Deep down in my heart I did not believe in a violent solution. Neither did I want to support FDD or Sans Echec. There was nowhere to hide. So I decided to leave my beloved country in 1995.”
And so started his harrowing journey into exile with his pregnant wife, Euphrasia. They escaped to a refugee camp in Tanzania, populated mostly by Hutus. His Tutsi facial features were his death knell. They chose to live in hiding in Tanzania in tough conditions for 14 months, during which his son Chris was born.
The church assisted them to journey to Malawi in June 1996. His Tutsi looks were not welcomed in the Malawian camp, mostly with Hutus. He was aware of death threats, so in February 1997, they left for Zimbabwe through Mozambique.
He was denied refugee status in Zimbabwe. Hutus in the refugee camp from Rwanda claimed he was a Tutsi. Once more his life was in danger. “The UNHCR (UN High Commission for Refugees) refused to defend me. I was rejected. It was very tough for me. It was painful. I had been rejected everywhere, even in my own country. Where was my family and I supposed to go from here,” Papa Chris agonisingly remembers. His ethnic cross was becoming too heavy to bear.
His unflinching belief in the goodness of humanity was difficult to sustain. His father’s sage words, which guided him through life’s adversities, now gave him courage: “Every human has two sides: a good side and a bad side. When you look at a person with good intention you see the positive side of that human being. Ask yourself, ‘What good can I connect with in this person to make a better world?’ If you do this you will be able to conquer anything, my son.”
He appealed the UNHCR decision on his status as a refugee, with support from the Church of Nazarene, and wrote to the Zimbabwe social welfare department, but to no avail. The Zimbabwe human rights organisation, Zim Rights, assisted him in extending his temporary permit. The security police intimidated him, claiming that he had lied about his ethnicity. Together with refugees from Somalia and Sudan he marched on the UNHCR offices in Harare in August 1998.
The next month, Papa Chris was arrested and taken to prison in Harare. He spent five dreadful weeks with long-term prisoners, some waiting to be hanged. Naked in a cold cell, his bed next to a toilet, he was beaten daily.
Zimbabwe was supporting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at war with the Tutsis from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. Ultimately, the Church of Nazarene, Amnesty International and Zim Rights secured his release. Papa Chris and his family were deported to Burundi via Malawi. He tearfully reflected: “My heart was sore. I was in tears.”
At the Lilongwe airport, the family escaped and with help from a church they fled to Mozambique. As it was not safe for Papa Chris in the refugee camps there, he left Euphrasia and baby Chris behind as they were not under threat. He arrived in Durban in November 1998, a month later heading off to Cape Town.
He was given shelter at a refugee centre in Cape Town. Euphrasia and baby Chris joined him.
After six months in the refugee camp, they had to find accommodation. They rented in many backyards with hard-hearted and unscrupulous landlords, some imposing restrictions on their use of toilets, amount of water and speaking their mother tongue, Kirundi. Fortunately, compassionate community members and the church provided food.
The traumatic experiences in Burundi, the horrific journey and the xenophobia and maltreatment by South Africans resulted in Euphrasia suffering severe depression. The frequent gunshots in the areas they lived in reminded her of the horrors she had witnessed back home. She was hospitalised on numerous occasions for psychiatric care. Once she attempted suicide by lying on the train track with little Chris on her chest at peak hour.
Papa Chris worked as a trolley manager at the Game Wynberg store, and as a security guard. He beams, his smile radiantly returns: “My professional dream of improving my maths teaching skills and teaching maths came true through the generous support of LEAP Science Centre and the NGO Edupeg, which empowers teachers. I was able to study at UCT. I worked part-time at LEAP and as a trainer of maths teachers in Gugulethu.
“Over the past three years the maths Grade 6 pass rate improved from 0 percent to 46 percent. We received an Excellence Award in Maths from the Department of Education!” His teaching goes beyond numeracy: “Kids have to believe that they are not a zero. I help to raise their self-esteem. I teach them to value themselves through positive feedback, motivating them, reinforcing their learning.”
Papa Chris proudly tells me: “Since last year I am a maths teacher at a (township school)… In the evenings I teach numeracy skills at an adult learning centre. I have a lovely family: Euphrasia is strong and happy… Chris has completed matric… a son in Grade 6 and a two-year-old girl. I am an active member of the Common Ground Church.”
Sadness slowly shadows his smile: “I still can’t live my life fully. I am still a refugee though I have lived here for over 14 years. There are many restrictions. I need a letter called ‘indefinite refugee’ before I am able to apply for my Permanent Residence. I have no criminal record. I will be over the moon if I get that letter.”
He observes with concern that South Africans are “living worlds apart from each other” and realises that we “fear getting closer to each other as it may be risky”, but he foresees grave danger if “you don’t know your neighbours living in other areas, if you don’t break the walls between racial groups, the poor and rich… in the long run it will generate into a big problem”.
On Freedom Day, let’s remember the suffering, humility and the spirit of the Papa Chris’s in our communities. Let’s confront our deep psychosocial malaise, liberate the “poverty of our mind”, so our Ubuntu (humaness) triumphs. Let’s celebrate our diversity, for in that lies our unity, our strength, our common future.
Let’s be guided by Madiba’s wisdom in The Long Walk to Freedom: “To be free is not merely to cast one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedoms of others.”
I am grateful to Shirley Gunn and the Human Rights Media Centre (www.hrmc.org.za) in Kenilworth for sharing their publications: Torn Apart: Thirteen refugees tell their stories(2003), and Torn Apart (2011): Thirteen refugees retell their stories. I am honoured for the connection to the magnanimous humanity of Papa Chris, who I look forward to as my neighbour – permanently.