All news items
21 September 2011
by Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh
AMERICAN immigration policy under the Obama administration has taken a pragmatic and progressive turn to halt deportation proceedings against undocumented migrants who pose no threat to public safety. An editorial in The New York Times comments that the White House has taken a large step towards a more sensible and lawful policy on illegal immigration. The US...
8 September 2011
BACKYARDERS who have spent winter in tents on city-owned land in Mitchell’s Plain say they would rather live on an exposed field than go to Blikkiesdorp where the city intends to move them.
The sentiment was expressed by backyarders standing outside the Cape High Court on Tuesday last week as Judge Nathan Erasmus heard their appeal brought by Lawyers for Human Rights – against an...
2 September 2011
Mail and Guardian: Foreigners in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, allege that the local council is working hand in glove with local business people to shut down their shops. The Somali Refugee Forum claims that since mid-June about 50 Somali, Ethiopian and other foreign-owned tuckshops have been closed in the Steve Tshwete municipality, which includes Middelburg and surrounding townships, and that local...
31 August 2011
24 hours - That's what Home Affairs has given Soweto-born Kaya FM producer to prove he is South African
KAYA FM executive producer Thabo Shole-Mashao was racing against time yesterday in a bid to prove to the Department of Home Affairs that he is a South African. Shole-Mashao, 31, went to Home Affairs to apply for a new passport but officials confiscated his ID and gave him 24 hours to prove...
31 August 2011
IRIN: In a week that saw two Somali traders shot dead in Cape Town and two more in Port Elizabeth, the South African government's handling of xenophobia received the lowest possible rating in a report by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Monitoring Project. Three years after widespread violence against foreigners broke out across the country, evaluators from the Monitoring Project noted...
31 August 2011
GENEVA, August 25 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency today launches a global campaign to promote action against statelessness, a scourge for millions of people worldwide. "These people are in desperate need of help because they live in a nightmarish legal limbo," High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said. "This makes them some of the most excluded people in the...
30 August 2011
There is no bi-lateral agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe to prevent refugees from the famine-wracked Horn of Africa entering South Africa, said state officials last week.The statements from the South African department of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week are in direct contrast to statements appearing on the South African Home Affairs website, and...
30 August 2011
Evictions are always a prickly issue and the case due before the Constitutional Court next month is no different.The matter comes weeks after the court reserved judg ment in another case, in which it has to decide whether the City of Johannesburg is responsible for providing temporary housing to residents who have been evicted from buildings that they had occupied illegally.
In March this...
29 August 2011
30 August 2011 - Today, the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED) joins the families of the disappeared and the whole international community in giving tribute to the world’s thousands of disappeared people. “ For them and because of them and their suffering families, our Coalition exists to knock at doors of all States urging them to sign, ratify and...
22 August 2011
The Times ANDREW MUBAYIWA I A group of asylum- seekers has applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an order directing the Home Affairs ministry to provide adequate refugee reception offices in South Africa, including in Johannesburg. The order - which, if granted, could force an overhaul of a refugee management system that at times borders on dysfunctional - seeks to compel the ministry to...