Life on the run for a refugee who can't go home to Burundi

It was during lunch break, while attending research workshops at Unisa in the dying days of winter, that I ran out of  words to maintain the conversation with my fellow student Zenon Ndayisenga.  “I should visit you in Burundi soon and see a bit of the Great Lakes region,” I said, not meaning it (although I could  imagine myself lubricating my oesophagus with a cold beer at sunset on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura).

The comment about me visiting him in Burundi extinguished Ndayisenga’s shining smile and silenced his charismatic laughter.

“Yes brother, but not now,” he said, quickly hiding the sorrowful expression that had fleetingly appeared on his face.

A few weeks later, in spring, we crossed paths again and I asked him about this reaction to my mention of his country.

Xenophobia and other words like it have become pervasive in South African social discourse and entrenched in the media.

Every so often the media has to react to horrific attacks on the lowest echelons of the immigrant hierarchy. The complex nature of human movement over  the face of the earth requires understanding because migration is the human reality that cannot be wished away.

Asylum seekers and refugees in particular among immigrants should receive a double portion of sympathy in societies to which they choose to flee.

When the civil war came, I changed into another person. I started to see things that I did not see before

Take Ndayisenga. Born in Burundi in 1986, the first seven years of his life were as normal as the universal conception of normal. But just as he started school, at the age of seven in 1993, civil war broke out in his beloved Burundi.

“I remember there was a time when there were people that worked for my grandfather, so I can say we were not rich but we were also not poor,” says Ndayisenga. “We always had two to four people working for us when I was growing up. I was not having hunger, so you can say, in summary, that everything was fine.

“I had friends that I played football with and apart from school we would go to another place where the one who could answer the most questions was the winner. It was just to increase our knowledge.

“When the civil war came, I changed into another person. I started to see things that I did not see before. When I started reading books I found out there were civil wars before, like in 1972.”

Ndayisenga’s family and all the people in their village were displaced  for three years by the war. He restarted school at the age of 10 but the civil war raged on for another decade. 

There was a particular incident during his teen years that dominates Ndayisenga’s memories of his mother. His mother’s biggest worry was that, of her eight children, Ndayisenga was to be provided more protection because he was so academically gifted that his mother believed  he would be the one child of hers who would grow up to become a prominent figure in society and lift the family up to a higher rung of social class.

This informed his mother’s reaction when Ndayisenga was about 16 and the family was attacked by a group of criminals.

“I remember that in my family I was very clever, intelligent at school,” he says. “One day, there were criminal people who came and attacked our house. When we tried to call people to come and help us, my mother kept asking: ‘Where is Zenon?’ When they found me she asked the others to hide me so that the criminals could not touch me. She said I would be saved so I could come back and save others.”

He laughs at this memory, but the hardship that awaited Ndayisenga in life had  yet to play out.

He completed his studies in 2007 and started teaching in Bujumbura. Then, just six months into the job, he was accused of supporting the opposition political party.

When they found me she asked the others to hide me so that the criminals could not touch me. She said I would be saved so I could come back and save others

It was preposterous, he says. The accusations metamorphosed into threats, which drove him to escape from those who wished him harm. Ironically, his one option was to join the rebel forces and subsequently their political wing.

SA  played a role in peacekeeping operations in Burundi and in the mediation and eventual ceasefire that brought President Pierre Nkurunziza to power.

In 2009, Ndayisenga and those who shared the trenches with Nkurunziza were integrated into the government military, the FDN.

Ndayisenga says he left the army when he  saw soldiers behaving in a lamentable manner, carrying out assassinations.

Following his departure from the army, Ndayisenga was arrested along with others who had absconded. He spent a year in prison.

In his sworn statement submitted to the Wits Law Clinic, which assisted him after his arrival in SA, Ndayisenga states that the judge who eventually declared him not guilty and had him released was himself detained for a year for presiding over the acquittal. The statement also says that the Burundian government issued a counter judgment, stating that Ndayisenga and others must remain in prison until 2020.

Ndayisenga was not going back to prison. He went into hiding, then  crossed the border into Rwanda. Kigali and Bujumbura had warm relations, however, and he feared that he might be arrested and extradited, so he crossed another border, into Uganda.

But the same problem existed in Uganda. While he was there it was revealed to him that his photograph had been distributed to officials at all points of entry to all countries that shared a border with Burundi.

He crossed yet another border, from Uganda into Kenya, but life was hard in the Kenyan refugee camps, so he kept moving, this time to South Sudan. There he encountered violence and more war, so he walked back into Kenya, traversing the country in a southerly direction until he reached  Tanzania.

Having covered many miles to evade capture, he was arrested at the Tanzanian border, where his photograph had been circulated along with pictures of others who had fallen out of favour with the new Burundian regime.

Ndayisenga’s survival against staggering odds owes much to his enterprising personality

An officer in Tanzania felt pity for Ndayisenga and turned a blind eye when he walked out of an unlocked prison cell during the night.

He fled to Malawi, where he was again briefly detained. From Malawi he went to Mozambique, then Zimbabwe, and finally he reached SA.

Unlike the other countries through which Ndayisenga travelled, SA does not confine asylum seekers to refugee camps. It has refugee receiving centres where details are processed; thereafter asylum seekers are free to integrate into South African society.

Since arriving in SA, Ndayisenga has demonstrated extraordinary resilience and an indomitable spirit. His driving ambition is to live up to his mother’s prophesy that he will become prominent and save others. His theme song, epitomising his determination to succeed, is Brenda Fassie’s 1993 hit, Higher & Higher, in which she sings: “I started at the bottom and I made it right on top. No-one can hold me back, I am never gonna stop.”

After leaving the refugee centre, Ndayisenga spent two weeks sleeping on the streets in Hillbrow, Johannesburg.

Then he got work distributing  those ubiquitous pamphlets offering dodgy penis enlargements, abortions and healings for all ills. From this he went to work as a car guard at Cresta shopping mall. After one year of working ceaselessly as a car guard, Ndayisenga had saved almost R30,000. He went to Wits University, where he intended to use his savings to pay for a degree in African politics.

At Wits he was directed to the University of SA  in Pretoria, which offered the subjects he wanted to study.

But at Unisa he discovered that the course in African politics  was offered only at honours level.

Undaunted, Ndayisenga registered for an undergraduate degree in political science at Unisa in 2014. He graduated in 2017 and in 2018 achieved his  honours degree in African politics.

This year he embarked on a master’s degree in African political thought. Once he has completed the research requirements and dissertation for this course, he plans to proceed to a doctorate. His abiding dream is to significantly contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the sphere of African political scholarship.

Ndayisenga’s survival against staggering odds owes much to his enterprising personality.  Once he had obtained enough academic qualifications to enable him to earn a living through  work that does  not involve watching cars in the parking lots of shopping malls, he started teaching French and providing assistance and coaching as a tutor to undergraduate students pursuing political science.

The biggest challenge, Ndayisenga says, has been getting his asylum papers  renewed every three months. This makes it difficult for him to get formal employment because prospective employers can see that his papers allow him only  a short time in the country.

He applied for  refugee status, which is less limiting, but his first application was declined. The Wits Law Clinic helped him  appeal against the negative ruling  and the outcome of the appeal is pending. If the appeal is unsuccessful, Ndayisenga will be deported  to Burundi, where the threat to his life still exists, since the political climate remains the same.