All news items
7 July 2014
A recent court case highlights the necessity of aligning South Africa’s refugee policy and practice with education law to ensure the removal of obstacles to an education for asylum-seeking children in South Africa.
Lawyers for Human Rights and the Centre for Child Law recently brought an application to address the plight of eight minor children who fled the war-torn Democratic...
7 July 2014
Last week Frederick Ngubane’s application for citizenship was denied by the Department of Home Affairs. He remains in South Africa but lives as a stateless person. He told AAISHA DADI PATEL his story.
I like to practise playing the piano at St Albans Cathedral down the road. They know me there. There isn’t much else that I can do; it’s illegal to employ someone who is...
4 July 2014
Former President Thabo Mbeki will appear before the arms deal inquiry in two weeks.
Arms Procurement Commission spokesman William Baloyi said that Mbeki would give evidence on July 17.
“The president was not subpoenaed. The president offered to assist the commission,” said Baloyi.
The commission is holding public hearings in Pretoria on the controversial 1999 arms deal.
“...
3 July 2014
NEWS ANALYSIS
During phase two of the arms procurement commission’s (APC’s) public hearings, which will begin on July 21, who makes the allegations will prove to be just as important as the allegations themselves.
Intentionally or not, by starting phase two of the inquiry with evidence by the so-called “critics” of the arms deal, it sets them up as complainants in the...
2 July 2014
Even the most apathetic South African could rattle off a couple of coherent sentences on the arms deal masquerading as the War on Terror when pressed to do so over dinner.
And anyone with half an eye on world developments could add something intelligible about the arming and disarming of Muammar Gaddafi, and the merciless war in Libya.
It seems trite to say these arms deals were highly publicised...
27 June 2014
The annual global trends report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) paints a very bleak picture.
The number of people forced to flee their homes across the world has exceeded 50‑million for the first time since World War II, an exponential rise that is stretching host countries and aid organisations to breaking point, according to figures released last week....
27 June 2014
On the first of April next year, the South African Police Service (SAPS) will commemorate 20 years as a democratic police service – but sadly it has not always lived up to public expectations of democratic policing. In the past decade, especially, increasing levels of corruption, criminality and brutality have seriously tarnished the SAPS’s image.
Incidents such as the killing in...
26 June 2014
Lawyers for Human Rights have been interviewed on SABC Newsroom about the violence witnessed at the Marabastad refugee reception office in Pretoria last week and outcome of a statelessness case.
23 June 2014
Treated like scum
As the world celebrated Refugee Day last week , security guards - employed by the Department of Home Affairs - sjambokked and pepper- sprayed asylum-seekers in Marabastad.
The department has stopped refugee reception offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth from registering new asylum claims. The only offices that take on new claims are in Marabastad, Durban, Musina...
22 June 2014
Gangsters and wardens are still smuggling dagga, heroin and crack cocaine, criminals are still hiding knives and sharpened objects in the “mineshaft” and inmates are stockpiling condoms for sex.
That’s according to an inmate who sent SMSes to CityPress from inside the prison just a week after we exposed an orgy of corruption, smuggling and rape in Leeuhof, and...