The Greenmarket Square refugee sit-in was a sit-in protest by a group of refugees for the purpose of getting relocated to a country outside of South Africa in response to xenophobia in the country. It lasted from 8 October 2019 when protestors first occupied the Waldorf Arcade to 2 April 2020 when the last group of protestors were evicted from the Central Methodist Mission church. The protestors demanded that UNHCR assist them with being relocated to a third country outside of South Africa and other than their country of origin. At its height the protest grew to include about 624 protestors, including 65 undocumented refugees, according to a lawyer for the South African Department of Home Affairs.
Timeline
Pretoria UNHCR sit-in
The sit-in started when around 250 protestors encamped outside the Cape Town offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on 8 October 2019, a month after the xenophobic motivated 2019 Johannesburg riots took place. A simultaneous protest by around 700 foreign refugees was also staged outside the UNHCR offices in Pretoria but were forcibly evicted on 17 November 2019 after protestors attempted to storm the UNHCR offices resulting in the arrest of 182 men, and temporary detention of 224 women and 169 children.
Waldorf Arcade sit-in
Initially starting at the UNHCR offices at the Waldorf Arcade on the east side of Greenmarket Square the sit-in moved to the Central Methodist Mission church on the square's west side after protesters were evicted on 30 October 2019. Rev Alan Storey offered the church as sanctuary to the protestors. The eviction of the protestors was controversial for the way in which it was implemented by South African Police.
Central Methodist Church sit-in
By 25 November around fifty of the protestors had accepted offers to be resettled in other parts of South Africa. The protestors again rejected a 27 January 2020 offer by the City of Cape Town to be resettled in Cape Town stating that they did not want to be sent back to the communities that they were trying to escape from. The City of Cape Town has argued that the refugees have furnished no evidence that they are homeless and that many of them have homes in the city.
By early December 2019 the Central Methodist Mission had stated on their blog that they had asked the refugees to leave the church. In the same month the City of Cape Town sought a court order granting them powers to arrest protestors for violating municipal by-laws. The court found that the city had to ensure that the human rights of protestors be protected before any penalties for infringing by-laws could be implemented.
By January 2020 concerns were increasingly raised about acts of violence between factions of protestors, sanitary conditions, as well as fire safety and overcrowding inside the Central Methodist Church. The long-term, continued presence of the protestors has had a serious negative impact on surrounding businesses, many of whom cater to tourists that visit the square. This negative economic impact also included market stall traders located on the square who saw a serious decrease in business. Surrounding businesses set up a Crisis Committee to stem loss of profits and business closures after the Burger King restaurant closed resulting in job losses for 15 people.
On 17 February 2020 the Western Cape High Court issued a judgement allowing the City of Cape Town to enforce municipal by-laws on protestors located outside of the Central Methodist Mission. The judgment also stated that the City of Cape Town must provide a venue and that the Department of Home Affairs must process the protesting refugees and determine their individual status and verification. The City of Cape Town initially postponed the court-ordered removal of the protestors due to the need to translate the court order into multiple non-South African languages so it could be effectively served to the protesters and so that other requirements of the court order could be met by the City of Cape Town.