Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Representative Structures in South Africa: The case study of Somali, Congolese, and Ethiopian communities

Understanding and identifying the functions, roles, responsibilities, accountability, and decision-making processes within the representative structures of any community is important. Yet, most of the existing studies in South Africa do not provide sufficient knowledge or insights about the representative structures and communities of refugees and asylum-seeking populations in the country. In general, there is inadequate discussion on the topic in the literature. This research focused on the representative and protection structures that are available to Somali, Ethiopian, and Congolese refugees and asylum seekers in the urban centres of Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Musina. Within this overarching objective, indicators such as leadership, legitimacy, representation, management skills, networks/partnerships, accountability, transparency, and effectiveness were used to gather information regarding refugees and asylum-seeking representative structures. This empirical research also has provided a detailed description of the manner in which refugee-led organizations, associations and self-help groups.