All news items
11 July 2013
Does South Africa currently receive the “highest annual number of asylum applications worldwide”?
It is a claim that in recent weeks has been picked up and repeated, often verbatim, by various media outlets. For example, an SABC television interview with Home Affairs minister Naledi Pandor prior to World Refugee Day on 20 June was prefaced with an introduction stating that...
10 July 2013
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says an estimated 62 foreigners have been killed in South Africa this year between January and May.
This emerged during panel discussions at the annual Public Interest Law Gathering at the University of Witwatersrand.
UNHCR says an estimated 130 incidents of attacks on foreigners have been reported since the beginning of the year.
Seventy...
23 June 2013
Homes of about 200 families were demolished and their belongings confiscated by Tshwane metro police last week.
The Tshwane Municipality said these families occupied the area illegally.
But Lawyers for Human Rights said the evictions were illegal.
The organisation is now threatening legal action against the Tshwane Municipality.
“The City of Tshwane was supposed to institute proper legal...
23 June 2013
The arms deal commission has strangely retained services of two top Gauteng advocates even though it is not facing any legal action.
Insiders close to the commission, which is probing the R70 billion arms procurement transaction, were taken aback by the retention of Advocate MacCaps Motimele and Advocate Busani Mabunda.
Advocates on a retainer charge between R5 000 and R16 000 a day, depending on...
22 June 2013
The United Nations Human Rights Council says it is difficult to record numbers of migrant children detained around the world including in South Africa.
“Documentation remains quite problematic because there’s a lot of under documentation of situations. There are countries that have detention, formal detention, that is more or less easy but is the kind of thing that many governments...
21 June 2013
Refugees living in Nelson Mandela Bay had reason to celebrate and enjoy World Refugee Day yesterday as they received news that the Port Elizabeth High Court had ordered that the Eastern Cape's only Refugee Reception Centre be reopened.
The centre was closed on October 20 2011 when, without prior warning, a notice was placed outside the Sidon Street, North End, office saying services...
19 June 2013
Hundreds of Somali-Americans rallied in Minnesota last week to protest the murder of a Somali shop owner in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The Somali man was killed during a week of riots that targeted Somalis and other African foreigners.
Abdi Nasir Mahmoud was beaten to death after two Zimbabwean immigrants who were allegedly looting a store were killed.
“You can replace what’s in a...
8 June 2013
Up to 200 Somalis marched in Cape Town on parliament on Friday morning to deliver a memorandum urging the government to act against the ongoing xenophobia attacks on them around the country. "We need protection - simple as that," one of the organisers, Abdullahi Ali Hassan, told AFP. Amid widespread poverty and unemployment, frustration in South Africa's run-down neighbourhoods...
7 June 2013
In Riverlea, people have had their solar geysers for only two weeks but their shoddy workmanship have dashed many residents' expectations.
Standing in her tiny kitchen, Faridea Appolis points angrily at the holes in the roof. Pipes, wrapped in silver insulation, run down the yellow walls to her sink and bathroom.
"They just knocked holes in my roof for the geyser. There was no...
7 June 2013
Ongoing incidents of xenophobic violence in South Africa have raised concerns about the safety of foreigners in that country, with the government being criticised for dismissing the fact that there is a real problem.
In the past few weeks there have a number of unrelated, xenophobic attacks across South Africa and human rights groups have warned that this is part of an ongoing problem.
Last month...