Africanews
For thousands of Angolan refugees the time to go back home is coming. Yet the joy of the imminent repatriation is marred by the uncertainties of the future and of what they will find in their homeland. |
As the body of a young mother, Willa, was being lowered into the grave at the end of Road 31 of Maheba Refugee Resettlement Camp, I was thinking about the possibility that her grave and all the other graves around her might be dug up in the near future. The remains of the hundreds of Angolan refugees buried here in the Maheba in North-Western Zambia might be "repatriated" by being brought back with the people when they finally returned home. Something similar occurred with the Mozambicans when they returned home from the refugee camps in Zambia a few years ago.
Whether or not that movement of graves will actually occur, the question has come to symbolise the outstanding concern of the all the refugees: what does "going home" really mean? There 27,000 Angolans and 3,000 Zaireans are waiting for the chance to return to their homes.
Africa is the home for the largest number of refugees and displaced persons in the world. Ten to twelve million people have been uprooted from their homes and forced to be on the move to other parts of their own countries or to foreign lands. Wars, ethnic conflicts, economic hardships, natural disasters such as drought: all these factors contribute to this mass exodus of people across the continent. Upwards to 80% of the refugees are women and children.
In Maheba there are many different feelings about the topic of "going home."
Many of the refugees really know no other home than the camp, since some had
left Angola over twenty years ago. Others had come as late as two years ago.
But most all of them, old and young alike, know that Zambia is not "home" and
they really do want to return to the land of their ancestors.
Their fears and anxieties are great, however, sparked by the possibility of a
renewal of the civil war that has devastated their richly endowed country (a
war waged under the sponsorship of the United States and the Soviet Union at
the height of the Cold War) and by the reality of millions of land mines
planted in the paths they would trod and the fields they would plough (15
million land mines for a population of 12 million!). If that fear cannot be
lessened in the months ahead, then repatriation will be postponed for yet
another year.
The Jesuit Refugee Service is present in Maheba with a pastoral team. Since the tean has a few vehicles, there are many demands for help with transportation, and frequently that means carrying the sick to and from the clinics and the dead to the graveyards. That's how I met Willa, as I moved her thin body from the clinic back to her home and then gathered a few weeks later with her family to bury her. I've become accustomed to the African traditions at funerals, but I was surprised by a symbolic action at Willa's grave. Her three small children crawled underneath her coffin set on two stools - a sign of their willingness to accompany their mother 'back home.' A poignant moment, especially in a refugee camp.
The refugee situation embodies a structural tragedy. The greed and arrogance of leaders who struggle for power at the expense of ordinary people; the selfish interference of outside powers that prolongs the conflicts way past their time; the obscene profits made by arms manufacturers and dealers who help killers kill and maim; the exploitation by officials who make money out of the "refugee business": these are truly social sins that cry out to heaven in the cries of the people .....
Willa went home. When will her children have a home?
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