#GRStories - INTRODUCING FATUMA

GRStories
Nov 29, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Jun 19

In the spirit of solidarity, 22 year old Fatuma, who fled to South Africa from her home in Burundi when she was 12, is seeking support establishing a small business to be able to raise her three girls. Fatuma, much like the majority of asylum seekers in South Africa, faces structural barriers to making a life in the country.

Despite institutional xenophobia, Fatuma has managed to raise 2 intelligent, creative children.

The family is based at the Wingfield Refugee Tent, where they were (dis)placed along with hundreds of other refugee families following a refugee sit-in in 2019. Under the guise of health and safety at the start of the COVID pandemic, the community was displaced. The tent residents face harsh living conditions with minimal electricity, regular flooding, and no access to social and legal services or support.

In the short term she hopes to start a vetkoek business again (in 2024, Law Enforcement confiscated her stock and equipment in Cape Town CBD, claiming she did not have necessary permission to sell), which brought in R60 per day for her family to survive on. Her dream is to save enough money to send her children to creche and school so that she can take short courses in sewing and childcare, which are potential paths that she is passionate about.

Fatuma needs R 2000 to get to a point of self-sustenance, primarily for childcare and food, and thereafter looking towards establishing her business.

UPDATE: Following 5 years of rumoured eviction threats against the tent residents, on the 18th June 2025 the mayor of Cape Town and Department of Home Affairs announced a joint eviction application. Fatuma doesn’t know what will happen if the court rules in favour of the eviction request: she has nowhere to go if the tent is demolished. And yet, in the midst of this terrifying uncertainty Fatuma holds onto her goal of sustaining a dignified life and making a living for herself.

UPDATE: The campaign has raised just over R970 so far. This has been a great success. Fatuma has also just given birth to a third baby girl called ‘believer in Good’ in Swahili.