Mail & Guardian online
Pearlie Joubert | Cape Town, South Africa - Oct 05 2008

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A Somali mother and her three children were killed in their shop in Tambo village near Queenstown last week. This was barely a month after they decided to leave a Cape Town refugee camp and reintegrate themselves into the community.

On the advice of government mediators Saida Mohamed and her children, aged 13, 10 and eight, left the Youngsfield refugee camp for what they hoped would be safer residence in the Eastern Cape. Mohamed's remaining family members, still in the Blue Waters refugee camp outside Muizenberg, now expect to be deported to Somalia, a country in the grip of civil war.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) visited the Somali community in Queenstown on Wednesday this week to compile a report on the incident.

Mohamed and her children, who had been in South Africa for almost three years, had a spaza shop in Khayelitsha Site C, which was looted and destroyed on May 23. Neighbours told her to leave the township. Told by government mediators that it was safe to leave, she decided that the Eastern Cape would be safer than Khayelitsha.

She opened her shop in Tambo village three weeks ago. Last Thursday evening a group of men entered the shop, locked the door and killed the family. Saida was stabbed 113 times and she and her 10-year-old daughter, Asha, were allegedly repeatedly raped.

A witness who found the bodies the next morning said all four family members had been stripped and mutilated. After they were killed the bodies were piled on top of one another. …

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