In the media
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14 October 2013
SABC News
Paul Holden, one of the so-called arms deal critics says failure by the former chief of acquisition at defence, Chippy Shaik, to testify at the inquiry probing the multi-billion rand armaments contract - will be a "travesty of justice".
Holden, who has written two books on the arms deal, is one of the witnesses who's been subpoenaed to testify during the second phase of the Commission.
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11 August 2013
City Press
The political backlash against Land Minister Gugile Nkwinti might reverse what had seemed a cut-and-dried deal to pay about R1 billion to a multimillionaire game rancher in a controversial land restitution deal.
Sources inside the department said while the minister was still eager to settle, paying R1 billion for one land claim might not be the best political option.
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7 October 2013
The Citizen
South Africa would make bigger strides in securing its population register and protecting national security if it focused its attention on preventing statelessness, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has said.
Stateless people – those who are not recognised as nationals by any country and can often not be deported because of this – form a shadow population of millions of people in South Africa.
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7 October 2013
The Citizen
Herbert Baluku spent six years of his adult life in jail and was released from a South African deportation centre only after two urgent court applications. His only “crime” was not being able to prove citizenship of any country.
His plight is but one example of the tribulations faced by over 12 million people worldwide who are forced to live their lives as stateless persons.
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4 October 2013
Mail & Guardian
As mine polluters get off scot-free, locals wait for the next deadly build-up of acids in the community's drinking water.
In January last year, exceptionally heavy rainfall led to the collapse of the water system in the small Mpumalanga town of Carolina. People fell ill, and the municipality was slow to tell them that they could not drink the water. Water tankers and mosques were the only source of clean water for the remainder of the year before the immediate problem was resolved.
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3 October 2013
eNCA
Identity theft has once again reared its ugly head after it emerged that terror accused Samantha Lewthwaite fraudulently used a South African travel document when planning the deadly Nairobi Mall attack.
The Department of Home Affairs is due in court next week to oppose a challenge against their decision to cancel all suspected fraudulent identity documents.
Lindiwe, who does not want to give her real name, said she was scared the recent development would only lead to more problems.
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27 September 2013
Business Day
Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has vowed to defend in court her decision to invalidate duplicate IDs by the end of October and multiple IDs by December — a decision that is being challenged by Lawyers for Human Rights.
The human rights organisation has brought a court application to declare "unlawful and unconstitutional" efforts to block any citizen’s duplicate identity numbers "without giving them a chance to respond".
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25 September 2013
Times Live
Trouble is brewing in Mokopane, Limpopo, where a community is fighting the establishment of what is expected to be the world's biggest platinum mine.
Community members in several villages accuse Canadian mining group Ivanhoe Mines of attempting to shove them aside to make way for its Platreef mine.
Ivanplats, an Ivanhoe subsidiary, is prospecting around the villages of Kgobudi, Magongoa, Mzombana and Tshamahansi, where it has discovered a massive reef with inclusions of platinum, palladium, gold, rhodium, nickel and copper.
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23 September 2013
The Citizen
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has warned that government steps to block duplicate identity numbers could lead to a potential nationality crisis.
Attorney Liesl Muller of the rights watchdog’s Statelessness Project said a blocked identity number equated to someone being deprived of nationality and denied access to basic rights while their status was investigated.
Acting Home Affairs director general Vusumuzi Mkhize earlier this week announced that the department intended declaring duplicate identity documents invalid by the end of October.
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13 September 2013
Daily Maverick
While the Department of Home Affairs compiles the National Population Register, rooting out duplicate or fraudulent ID documents, concerns have arisen that measures to “block” these may leave hundreds of thousands of innocent South Africans stateless.
Khadija Patel spoke to Lawyers for Human Rights about the implications.
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