Programme News
15 August 2011
(News)
IOL In what can be hailed as a landmark judgment for hawkers – who are harassed by municipalities in spite of court orders preventing them from doing so – a judge has ordered that a mayor and her municipality pay hefty fines. The municipality also has to pay each hawker R500 in compensation.
The order was given last week by the Mafikeng High Court against the Rustenburg...
10 August 2011
(News)
Two migrants were allegedly killed and several injured at a refugee centre in Pretoria earlier this week during a stampede, according to witnesses. But police and home affairs officials deny a stampede took place or that anyone was killed or hurt. Witnesses at the Marabastad centre on Monday said they saw a woman and child being trampled as people in the queue flooded towards the centre when the...
10 August 2011
(News)
Close to 900000 Zimbabweans have applied for asylum in South Africa, official figures show, dashing any hopes that an exercise to issue work and study permits to the immigrants could help to ease the overload on the refugee-handling system.
Department of Home Affairs statistics also show a steady flow of new refuge-seekers from Zimbabwe, with an average of about 5000 a month received since...
10 August 2011
(News)
JOHANNESBURG, 2 August 2011 (IRIN) - Increasing numbers of Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing war, drought and poverty in their home countries face arrest, deportation and detention as they try to make their way to the south of the continent.
For most the goal is South Africa - the only country in the region where refugees and asylum-seekers have freedom of movement and the right to work...
10 August 2011
(News)
Australia's High Court has stopped the authorities from deporting a boat-load of asylum seekers to Malaysia. A BBC News report notes that lawyers for the group of refugees argued that their transfer to Malaysia would be illegal. Judges ruled there was a ‘sufficiently serious question’, and ordered a halt to such transfers until a full hearing can be held later this month. The ruling...
10 August 2011
(News)
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
(News)
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
(News)
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
(News)
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
(News)
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...