A South African celebrity's harrowing experience as an asylum seeker in Holland

Renowned South African actress, newscaster, author and whistle-blower Vatiswa Viola Ndara was at the pinnacle of her theatrical artistry when she became a proponent of truth, justice and transparency. Exposing the ills that encroached upon the creative fraternity in her memoir, Unfiltered: My Unglamorous Odyssey in the World of South African Entertainment, subjected her to persecution.

After surviving gunshot wounds and a high-speed car chase in the early 2000s, and then, in later years, a rape by a high-profile legal eagle she knew, she realised that writing the book would put her in harm's way. She fled her country in December 2023 after realising there was no protection for her. She then encountered blatant racial cruelty from Irish customs officials in Dublin before landing at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to request asylum.

On December 12, 2023, her second day in Holland, her asylum credentials were verified, and Vatiswa was introduced to the Dutch Council for Refugees, Vluchtelingen Werk Nederland (VWN), pronounced as Vivian, an NGO and independent human rights body that organizes legal aid and assigns lawyers to asylum seekers.

Typically, as an actress and voice artist, the study of the geometry of human presence comes naturally to Vatiswa. This is how she immediately sensed the apathetic attitude of her legal representative, Koudijs. When she mentioned the open letter she had previously written in 2019 to South Africa's Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture about the plight of actors, Koudijs scornfully rebuffed it. He subsequently subjected her to a scathing verbal attack: "So just because you were raped, does that mean we should take in all the women who've been raped?"

Caring little about the privacy of his client, Koudijs contemptuously accepted a communal living space instead of mounting a concerted effort to secure privacy within the Amsterdam asylum camp for Vatiswa. On the evening of December 18, 2023, Vatiswa was authorised to leave Schiphol Detention Centre by the immigration bureau, and she formally set foot on Dutch soil.

The Amsterdam asylum camp is operated by the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers, Centraal Orgaan opvang Asielzoekers (COA). As Vatiswa would soon learn from other residents, COA was an organisation that attained all the hallmarks of a classic cartel: it was an absolute monopoly with a strict code of silence, operating like the mafia. The only distinction is that while the Italian mafia relied on physical intimidation, COA "dehumanised asylum seekers with an impenetrable wall of bureaucratic indifference."

What was poetically written in the marketing brochure bore no resemblance to actuality. The asylum camp was an unhygienic, cockroach-infested convergence of overcrowded units with no cleaning schedule or code of conduct. Vatiswa learned from other residents that COA staff discriminated against Black people and demanded sexual favours from asylum seekers in exchange for preferential treatment.

The agency psychologically tormented residents who challenged the status quo and dared to break their silence, resulting in an increase in suicide rates, attempted suicides, stabbings and altercations.

The frequency of police cars and ambulances had become the camp's soundtrack, a testament to COA's incompetence in conflict resolution. A multitude of asylum seekers were drowning in depression, self-medication and were left to wallow in their sorrow.

Vatiswa's multinational unit in the camp consisted of female residents from Côte d'Ivoire, Somalia, Uganda and DR Congo. They shared two mini-fridges among five adults and three children. When an aggressive mold in the rooms grew unbearable, she was moved to a different unit at the beginning of 2024.

She soon requested a change of counsel, a proposal that was rejected by VWN, who kept referring to the indifferent Koudijs as a competent lawyer. She began writing an assortment of complaints about COA in an effort to understand why "the Netherlands, a nation which prided itself as a defender of human rights, was subjugating asylum seekers, using psychological torment." Her letters were ignored.

She was forced to share her room with two gaslighting Eastern African sisters who colluded in leaving the shared kitchen and bathroom in a state of filth. COA staff, who thrived in a turmoil of chaos, were nonchalantly indifferent to every biological hazard, including floor mops being placed in kitchen sinks.

Through her enlightening Dutch bureaucratic experience, Vatiswa came to learn the unwritten rule that residents shouldn't, under any circumstances, report to COA for any transgression. COA's detachment was absolute, and to them, the asylum seekers were "cattle to be stalled and fed, but never respected." A flagrant disregard was displayed toward their mental health. When Vatiswa brought up the importance of privacy as a necessity in alleviating mental stress, COA staff would castigate her by stating that "those who are mentally affected can go to the psychologist."

In October 2025, Vatiswa was scheduled for a series of global online interviews across several media platforms to promote her memoir Unfiltered. She therefore requested a private space to do so, but her appeal was rebuffed. Fearful that she would expose its sinister conduct, COA impeded the interviews by transferring Vatiswa from Amsterdam to Arnhem, an overcrowded and hostile environment meant for land arrivals, while Vatiswa had arrived via Schiphol Airport. It seems this was the facility where COA "dumped" residents they earmarked as problematic.

The relocation was a bureaucratic euphemism to impel her to conform to their autocracy. She sensed the unmistakable display of hostility upon her arrival, reinforcing her certainty that COA staff in Arnhem had been instructed to make her life unbearable.

Out of malice, she was intentionally paired with Mara, a West African roommate who used the sink for a chronic ritual of consistent and abnormal nose-blowing and had a predisposition to break into symphonies in the middle of the night. Vatiswa's protests to COA were received with hostility, apathy and indifference.

Continuing with her paper trail, Vatiswa began penning her asylum experience in her new memoir Unfiltered; Welcome to Holland; Terms and Conditions Apply; My Dutch Asylum Struggle. Upon learning that she was documenting her journey, two COA staff members requested, "You must write nice things about us", an inadvertent admission that the agency was dominated by malicious conduct. Vatiswa was even threatened by a COA staff member she describes as looking all of twelve years old. The young man threatened, "If you mention the COA in your interviews, we'll throw you out on the streets."

Jeff Anthony is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Center @jeffbigbrother