Support Fatuma

23 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, and has just given birth to a third baby girl called ‘believer in Good’ in Swahili. 

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. 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 applica...