All news items
10 August 2011
05 August 2011 | ILSE DE LANGE
JOHANNESBURG - A North Gauteng High Court judge yesterday ordered the Steve Biko Hospital in Pretoria to immediately recommence treatment of a four-year-old Zimbabwean girl, who is critically ill with a malignant brain tumour. The little girl’s father went to court with the help of Lawyers for Human Rights after the hospital told him his daughter’s...
10 August 2011
Aug 8, 2011 | KHETHIWE CHELEMU
In what could be a landmark case, 19 Ethiopian men have taken Minister of Home Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to court, claiming her department illegally arrested them.
In court papers filed in the Johannesburg High Court, the men claim that the Department of Foreign Affairs acted unlawfully by arresting them hours after they arrived in the city on June 26 and by...
4 August 2011
Opinion Piece in the Natal Mercury by Jessica George, Lawyers for Human Rights
If you spend an afternoon near the Beit Bridge border, 18km from Musina, you may encounter a group of boys playing soccer in the street. Typical teenagers, they laugh and joke, exhausting every last ray of sunlight before the day’s end. Night is harsher; some sleep in a container down the road sponsored by...
3 August 2011
If you spend an afternoon near the Beit Bridge border, 18km from Musina, you may encounter a group of boys playing soccer in the street. Typical teenagers, they laugh and joke, exhausting every last ray of sunlight before the day’s end.
Night is harsher; some sleep in a container down the road sponsored by Save the Children. Others sleep on the streets, lying on top of one another for...
2 August 2011
Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma today Monday, 1 August confirms that the department has met its own internal deadline of adjudicating all 275 762 applications for work, study and business permits from undocumented Zimbabwean nationals which were submitted by 31 December 2010.
Minister Dlamini Zuma reiterates her gratitude to all Zimbabwean nationals who took time from their...
26 July 2011
Pretoria - Black Africans were not the only people targeted for deportation, the home affairs department said on Thursday. "That's not true, we target all nationals found to be without legal documentation, whether black or white, they are arrested and deported," said deputy director-general Jackie McKay, to a question at a media briefing in Pretoria. McKay highlighted that while...
4 July 2011
Johannesburg - ANC MP Maggie Maunye, who chairs the portfolio committee on home affairs, apologised on Sunday for comments she made which "may have been construed to be xenophobic", the ANC said.
"She realises that her remarks, which sought to underscore South Africa's challenges pertaining to the immigration control, may have been insensitive to the plight of many foreign...
4 July 2011
SAPA I Any undocumented Zimbabweans still in SA by the end of the government's amnesty period in July will be deported, home affairs said on Thursday.
When the July 31 moratorium extended last year to Zimbabweans expired, those who were still undocumented would be given a grace period, then sent back home, head of the Zimbabwe document project Jacob Mamabolo told reporters. This grace...
22 June 2011
Increasingly South Africa is receiving children migrating from countries as far off as Somalia, DRC, Burundi and Zimbabwe who cross borders without parents, relatives or care-givers. Commonly referred to as unaccompanied minors, these children leave their countries of origin for a number of reasons, some fleeing war and conflict, forcible recruitment as child soldiers, forced marriage,...
20 June 2011
When Parliament adopted the Refugees Act just more than a decade ago, it was hailed by many as a progressive and modern approach to protect people fleeing persecution and civil strife. South Africa broke from the traditional African approach of accommodating refugees in large rural-based camps. Parliament has also thus far resisted the European and Australian examples of detaining asylum seekers...