There were tense moments on Monday when several hundred refugees marched on Parliament to air their grievances over the recent xenophobic violence and demand United Nations intervention.

After being addressed by former Treatment Action Campaign chairperson Zackie Achmat and refugee leaders, sections of the crowd surged towards a small line of police outside parliament's main Roeland Street entrance.

For a while the police had their hands full keeping the chanting crowd at bay, but tension eased and the refugees moved back a few metres.

A memorandum was eventually handed over to a government representative and the crowd began to disperse.

Achmat apologised to the refugees "on behalf of the entire country" for attacks on them by mobs in some parts of the country about two weeks ago.

Lack of moral leadership

He lamented the lack of "moral leadership" on the part of government during the crisis, especially President Thabo Mbeki, Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool, and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille.

He called for compensation for the victims, secure reintegration of those who wanted to return to the areas they were driven from, and help for those wanting to return to their countries of origin.

The refugees made no bones about their desire for United Nations assistance, with continuous chants of "UN, UN" and dozens of placards calling for action by the UN High Commission for Refugees.

Addressing a media briefing afterwards, refugee leaders hammered home the call for UN intervention.

"Your government is actually more concerned about saving faces than saving our children," said an angry Serge Bambi Samba, a Congolese who is currently housed at Soetwater, the largest of Cape Town's six refugee camps.

"Do not let disaster become a tragedy."

Strong words

He said he believed that South Africa was "preparing genocide" because of its unwillingness to call in the UNHCR.

Reintegration into communities was impossible now, given the high levels of hatred, and would still be impossible ten or even 20 years from now.

"People from South Africa really hate us from the hearts. We can feel it," he said.

The major problems were lack of jobs and poverty: as long as they continued, so would xenophobia.

Deo Kabemba Bin Ngulu, also from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and talking for a group that has been sleeping outside Cape Town's city centre police station, said what was going on was not xenophobia but war.

"There is a war against all foreign nationals in South Africa," he said.

South Africa was part of an international conspiracy against poor people around the world, and had become the "United States of America in Africa".

However, another speaker at the briefing, Hussein Omar, representing what he said were intellectuals and business people in the Somali Crisis Management Committee, said the refugees could not claim that all South Africans hated them.

SA govt blamed

But he did insist that the South African government was "part of the xenophobia".

The red identity documents that refugees were issued by the department of home affairs immediately set them apart from South Africans.

He said he would not be surprised if some refugees committed suicide.

"People are so desperate. They are driven to the limit," he said. B-Abee Toperesu, from Zimbabwe, complained that the South African government was not coming to find out what the refugees wanted, and what they proposed as solutions.

"We don't want to be kept as if we are children,. We don't want to be kept as if we have nothing to contribute," he said.

Toperesu, who is housed at the Youngsfield military base, also rejected the notion of reintegration.

"That on its own is not going to work... simply because the people who chased us away are our neighbours, are our landlords," he said.

He said the South African government had been given a chance to do something, and had failed. Now the UN was needed.

"That's our appeal as Zimbabweans. We no longer want South Africa," he said.

"United Nations, please come and help us. We are desperately in need of your assistance."

Sapa