"Why are we being treated like animals?"

THE first thing one senses when entering the refugee camp at the Glenvista rifle range in Johannesburg is, isolation. Here is a group of destitute foreigners who are in South Africa because they fled their respective countries because of either war, famine or whatever other problem that the African continent has inherited, and they come to our country, only to be treated like a distant cousin.
When the xenophobic attacks first broke out, I felt ashamed as a South African, but when I visited the camp and saw a one month old baby wrapped in nothing but a dirty rag, I felt ashamed as a human being. As I was walking around the camp I was drawn by the sound of a crying infant and upon further inspection I saw a mother and her three infants sitting around a camp fire with two pots on the fire. The mother told me that she’s preparing their first meal of the day (it was approximately 11am) and her infant was crying because she was hungry. It took everything in me not to break out in a sob right there in front of them, so I just walked away. The majority of the people said they had opted to cooking their own food because the food provided at the camp gave them diarrhea.
I came across a teenager who was carrying two knitting needles and wool. She’s a grade 8 student in a school in Pretoria and she said they were given the needles and wool by the Red Cross to keep them busy. She was knitting herself a scarf for winter. But before I could escape she asked me, “Why are they doing this to us? Why are they treating us like animals?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just looked at her and assured her that things will get better and everything will be back to normal soon and she could go back to school.
I certainly hope that something will be done to remedy the situation; either by being integrated back to their old communities or improving their current living conditions.