[Image: Ayanda Ndamane / ANA]

If you’ve wandered through Greenmarket Square over the past couple of months, you would have noticed the informal settlement that had formed around the Methodist church.

The people occupying that space are all immigrants, who claim that they are seeking asylum because xenophobia in South Africa has reached a point where their lives are at risk.

On February 17, the Western Cape High Court granted the City of Cape Town an order allowing the enforcement of its municipal bylaws – namely, the removal of unauthorised squatters in public spaces.

This past weekend, the City, in a joint operation with the South African Police Service, worked to move the refugees from the church.

You can see the beginning of the operation here:

Things really started escalating when the police started forcibly moving people’s belongings:

According to News24, mere hours after the refugees were moved from the Methodist Church, they relocated to St Mary’s Catholic Church opposite Parliament.

No sooner had about 200 refugees moved into the Catholic church’s garden, than they were surrounded by authorities again.

Police entered the garden in a wall of shields and pushed them to Roeland Street.

Bottles, chairs and buckets were thrown at police as they did this.

Footage of the standoff shows women and children crying, while police fire rubber bullets and stun grenades:

Meanwhile, back at the Methodist church, a massive clean up was underway:

Massive clean up of perimeter of #CapeTown‘s Central #Methodist Mission underway after refugees moved from #Greenmarket Square in terms of by-law enforcement @TeamNews24 pic.twitter.com/DVkP32xhJp

— Jenni Evans (@itchybyte) March 1, 2020

The bylaw enforcement court order excludes those who were inside the church.

They could be seen looking out through the glass of the locked doors.

TimesLIVE spoke with JP Smith, mayoral committee member for safety and security, who said in a statement that the city was not insensitive to the plight of the refugees, “but we can simply not allow the situation to carry on unchecked, as it has had a major impact on surrounding businesses, including the traders on Greenmarket Square”.

He also said that emergency shelter would not be provided elsewhere for the refugees “given the great need that exists among South Africans, not to mention the precedent that it would set”.

He has appealed to the refugees to go back to where they lived before they moved to Greenmarket Square.

So far, refugees say the City has failed to address the safety concerns and fears they put forward when all of this started.

[source:news24&timeslive]