All news items
22 July 2008
Pretoria - Residents of the Schubart and Kruger Parkflats in Pretoria obtained an urgent Pretoria High Court interdict on Tuesdayto stop their eviction.This followed an outbreak of violence and the death ofat least six residents when a fire broke out in the Kruger Park flats duringprotests against forced evictions.Judge Ferdi Preller granted an interim order to stopevictions from continuing at...
1 July 2008
LHR’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme is seeking a lawyer with human rights experience in its Musina office in Limpopo.
Key responsibilities:
monitoring of the deportation process and the treatment of detainees who held pending deportation to Zimbabwe;
Legal assistance to asylum seekers and migrant workers in that region; ·
Liaise with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees...
23 April 2008
DESPITE the denials by President Thabo Mbeki and Home Affairs Minister Novisiwe Mapisa-Nqakula, there is a crisis in Zimbabwe; one that threatens to further displace the Zimbabwean people. Both have stated that there is no crisis that warrants any policy or intervention on the part of the government regarding the numbers of people crossing the SA-Zimbabwe border. This intransigent view on the...
3 March 2008
A blind father has finally been reunited with his nine-month-old daughter after a bitter legal battle.
And now lawyers want the courts to prevent social workers from taking children away from their biological parents on flimsy grounds.
The girl was taken away from her father in November last year, shortly after her mother's funeral.
The father, who can't be named to protect the child, looked...
11 February 2008
HUMAN rights issues concerning refugees,immigrants and exiles needed urgent action at all three levels of government,experts said last week during a panel discussion at Wits University. The discussion dealt with the police raid onimmigrants at the Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg on January31, as well as the country's immigration policy. The panel highlighted the lack of...
19 October 2007
Tears of joy flowed on Tuesday when the Richtersveld community finally won back the diamond-rich land taken from them almost a century ago.The restoration of the land was part of a settlement agreement confirmed by Land Claims Court Judge Antonie Gildenhuys, sitting in Cape Town.His order, handed down just after 4pm, ended a decade-long legal battle that went all the way to the Constitutional...
20 September 2007
BEN MACLENNAN | CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - Sep 20 2007 14:27A group ofRichtersveld residents is to challenge a settlement agreement with thegovernment when the document goes before the Land Claims Court in Cape Townnext week for ratification.
Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin andrepresentatives of the Richtersveld Sida !hub Communal Property Association(CPA) signed the agreement in April...
14 May 2007
JOHANNESBURG - Former Zimbabwe oppositionlawmaker Roy Bennett said yesterday he had finally won asylum in South Africa -the first senior Zimbabwe political figure to succeed.The "happy" Bennett, who has been in the countryfor more than a year now, said Home Affairs gave him the asylum papers onFriday after the Refugees Appeal Board overruled a decision by the governmentto deny him...
3 September 2006
Illegal immigrants fume at their treatment in Lindela, (Sunday Independent, 2006-09-03) For all its controls and systems, commissions of inquiry and checks on corruption, the repatriation camp fails in many ways to serve the people who are incarcerated there. It's a long way from home, this crowded courtyard in Section B at Lindela repatriation camp outside Krugersdorp. Sadly,...
1 August 2006
In the first case of its kind in the world, refugees from across Africa have approached the Constitutional Court to help them gain access to the private security industry. But the matter before the court is about more than just refugees who want to be security guards. "To my knowledge, before the court was approached, no other court, either in South Africa or any other jurisdiction in the...