For her oral story about her experience working with the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Sarah Konrad T’25 won Best Overall in the 2024 DukeEngage Reflection Challenge.
Judges noted that Konrad’s reflection showed her grappling with ethical questions, holding respect for cultural differences, and reflecting on her own role in social change — beautifully portraying what a transformative experience DukeEngage can be.
“I’m sorry,” I say to the Somali woman sitting across from me, pleading with me as she plays the fuzzy voice memo rigged to the false line she was given to call and telling me she’s been to Home Affairs, the part of the South African government that handles refugee matters, multiple times.
“You must go to Home Affairs for the reissuing of the birth certificate. I’ve written down the address and phone number for you. Did you go to the office in Epping last time?”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. This time to a Congolese man whose children’s lives are threatened everyday at school by bigoted classmates that flash silver knives and bronze knuckles at them for daring to be foreign, begging me if there’s anything our clinic can do to intercede when both the police and the school have sat on their heels.
“Have you opened an investigation with the Department of Education?”
“I’m sorry,” I say yet again to a man who has been in this country for two decades but hails from the part of the Democratic Republic of Congo that is not rife with conflict between the government and armed groups.
“I cannot offer you an answer today. I will present your case to my supervisor when she returns and the clinic will be in touch as to whether or not we will take on your case.”
I sat in an office nestled in the rear of the University of Cape Town’s law school this past summer, watery sunlight streaming through the window. I filed away clients’ issues as “Expired Permit”, “Lost Birth Certificate”, or “Final Rejection.” I reported to my supervisor, relayed the facts of the case, and confirmed the legal steps that the Refugee Rights Unit is allowed to take.
I had known my job would be hard: human rights work always is, climbing a mountain that only grows higher. I had known that I would have to tell people time and time again that I couldn’t help them, that the law was not on their side, that they were out of options. I would be inundated with tales of violence: bombings, rape, amputation.
I had to be part of a highly routinized process that missed the grief lining the face of the Somali woman sitting across from me, the anguish of the Congolese man who feared for his children’s lives, the absolute disbelief of a 20-year resident of South Africa that there were no exceptions to refugee law for individuals who had been in the country as long as he had.
I see your humanity, I wish I could say. I feel for you. If I had the power, I would use it.
I hadn’t known if I could handle it going in. Sometimes, I couldn’t. I cried in my office twice.
“I know that justice will not be achieved until these issues within the system are addressed at their root cause…But I still came away shining with joy each and every time I was able to help someone. Helping one person, I decided, was infinitely better than helping no one.”
And it’s not as though I blamed my supervisors. They are among the most compassionate people to walk this earth, winning an appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa mid-June that guaranteed the validity of sur place refugee claims, and arguing before the High Court to give South African nationality to an unaccompanied minor. They fight, in the ways they can, each and every day. They do their part to try and claw at the cracks of this system that condemns too many vulnerable people. They fight to challenge the flawed framework of the law and expand nets of support for those who it victimizes.
But our clinic had limited resources, both in terms of time and money, and hundreds of clients to see each week. Sometimes, our clients vented their frustrations, telling one of our candidate attorneys that “we are too lazy” that we “do not do enough work” for them.
The problem lies not with our attorneys, but with a system that makes no distinctions between people who have been here for two or twenty years when it comes to determining their legitimacy to remain. A system that takes ten, fifteen, twenty years to grant recognized refugee status to asylum-seekers. A system that only has five offices in the entire country to attend to the manifold needs of refugees and asylum-seekers.
The problem lies in the scant funding that anything related to human rights receives in this world, forcing our clinic to pick and choose the cases we take on and devote our resources to those we believe have the highest likelihood of succeeding with. Marginal though the difference was, I still felt satisfaction as I filed online extensions to renew people’s asylum permits. I saw gratitude lining the features of each person I wrote letters protecting them from deportation as they awaited appointments with Home Affairs. I felt immensely proud when I convinced my supervisor to take someone’s case on for judicial review.
I know that justice will not be achieved until these issues within the system are addressed at their root cause. The glass is far more than half-empty. But I still came away shining with joy each and every time I was able to help someone. Helping one person, I decided, was infinitely better than helping no one. For every five, ten, twenty people our clinic could do nothing for, there was someone for whom we could do something.
And that was everything. My 1/128th of the glass. There was, is, something in the glass, and that was enough. I will cling to my 1/128th of the glass with all my might in the hopes that one day, if individuals like me, like my wonderful coworkers and supervisors at the Refugee Rights Units, keep at it, the glass will be full.
Sarah Konrad is a history major with minors in computer science and French studies. She was recently awarded a Marshall Scholarship and plans to study at the University of St. Andrews.
Konrad is a Nakayama Public Service Scholar and a Faculty Scholar. She has also conducted research for the Duke Institutional History Project, where she focused on the relationship between the board of trustees and slavery at Trinity College.