Ken Saro-Wiwa Resource Centre in Cape Town
Computer Training Combined With Fighting Xenophobia
Feb 26, 2009
The OSF has set itself three critical tasks in South Africa:
- To win support for the struggle of the Ogoni people in Nigeria’s Niger Delta against the environmental degradation, economic exploitation, ethnic discrimination and state repression conducted by an alliance between Shell Oil and the federal government of Nigeria. This is the struggle for which the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in 1995 by the Nigerian government of the time.
- To overcome the South African xenophobia directed against refugees and immigrants from the rest of Africa. Xenophobic violence is a constant feature of life in South Africa. Last year it exploded into countrywide riots that killed 62 people and displaced some 35 thousand, according to Jonny Steinberg’s paper ‘South Africa’s Xenophobic Eruption’ published by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in November 2008.
- To raise enough funds to sustain its members and actvities, which is hard to do for an organisation of poor people facing discrimination in a country with 38,3% unemployment according to the 2008 South Africa Survey of The Municipal Outreach Project.
Ogoni Opposition to Shell
A visit to the centre found the OSF’s Dora Barry overseeing the internet café-style setting. Barry is a member of the Ogoni ethnic group in the Niger Delta whose opposition to Shell and the Nigerian government resulted in them ending up in a refugee camp in Benin in conditions described as “pathetic” by two of her comrades, Lucky Deebom and Barisi Nwigbara, who have come to help manage the centre.
“After coming to South Africa I struggled to survive,” Dora Barry said. “I contacted some of the women who were in the Benin camp with me, but who were now in Canada and the USA. They said they would send money but we must try to find a way to sustain ourselves. That is how the idea of the centre was born.”
The centre offers internet access as well training in writing and computer skills. Dora Barry explained that they want to offer these services to African immigrants as well as the activists using the Community House building in Salt River where the centre is based. Both groups, they know, often cannot afford to pay. “We are hoping that Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) with funding will pay us to offer these services to the people they work with. That way everybody benefits,” she said.
Bridge Gap beween Immigrant and South African Workers
Barry Wugale, also of the OSF, added that they want the centre to bridge the gap between South African and immigrant workers. Few of the latter belong to South African trade unions and they are often seen as strike breakers. “This is part of the reasons for xenophobia,” said Wugale. “We want to bring migrant and refugee workers together in the same space with South African workers where they can exchange information about labour laws and relations in South Africa as well as about the problems and conditions faced by migrants both here and in places like Ogoniland. If this training is continuous we will see immigrants integrating into South Africa’s unions and xenophobia going down.”
Public Launch supported by Cosatu, Ilrig and LRS
This initiative will be launched in April at a public gathering of members of the immigrant communities and union members. Organised by the OSF, it is also supported by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the International Labour Research and Information Group and the Labour Research Service.
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