Programme News
1 November 2011
(News)
Johannesburg: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies (IFRC) is calling Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments put in place policies that recognize the rights of migrants and to join forces with regional humanitarian organizations to eliminated problems faced by migrants in the region. IFRC Southern Africa representative Ken Odur Friday speaking in...
1 November 2011
(News)
The department of Labour is investigating employers of farmworkers and domestic workers in Musina, Limpopo, who exploit undocumented foreign workers by offering them low wages and then blowing the whistle on them on payday.The department met with stakeholders on Thursday in Musina, where it explained that the huge number of problems afflicting migrant workers in the area meant there was an...
13 October 2011
(News)
SOUTH AFRICA yesterday deported 261 Zimbabweans who were living in that country illegally while 300 more such immigrants are expected to arrive at Beitbridge Border Post today.
This follows the expiry of the July 31 deadline for them to regularise their papers. The first batch of 261 Zimbabweans arrived here around midday yesterday in a convoy of four buses under heavy security. The...
10 October 2011
(News)
At a glance, Jabulani Sibanda is living the South African dream. At 31, he is married with two beautiful children, and has a car, a house and his own business.
But Sibanda doesn't really own much of his life because he is stateless. Despite years of trying to obtain legal documents of his citizenship and residency status, he remains undocumented. Without them, he is resigned to living...
7 October 2011
(News)
Mail and Guardian: The moratorium on deporting illegal Zimbabweans has quietly been lifted by the department of home affairs, leading to an outcry from refugee rights groups.
No deportations of Zimbabweans have taken place for almost two years while home affairs have been running the Zimbabwe documentation project (ZDP) to offer legal status to Zimbabweans living illegally in South...
6 October 2011
(News)
Luwizhi has been on a paper chase for the last four years – not as a student pursuing higher education, but as someone seeking documents while bouncing between being an asylum-seeker, migrant worker and stateless person.
Luwizhi was born in 1975 to
a Zambian father and a
Malawian mother who had
met and married in
Zimbabwe as migrant
workers decades ago. He
grew up in Zimbabwe and
had...
5 October 2011
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights is disappointed with today’s decision by the Constitutional Court to dismiss leave to appeal on behalf of the residents of the Schubart Park flats in Pretoria. As hundreds of families struggle to secure emergency accommodation and the City of Tshwane continues to remove the residents’ belongings in the absence of any Court order or legal mechanism...
27 September 2011
(News)
At a time when the country was known as the “breadbasket of Africa”, hundreds of thousands of persons migrated to Zimbabwe, mostly as farm labourers from neighboring countries in Southern Africa. In the initial blush of post-independence, the Zimbabwean Constitution of 1983 acknowledged this migrant population by allowing citizenship to flow from birth on the territory to children...
25 September 2011
(Press release)
Schubart Park Residents Spend Weekend on Streets Despite City’s Promises
The evicted residents of Schubart Park spent the weekend on the streets of Pretoria after the City of Tshwane failed to fulfill its promises to provide alternative accommodation to them.
Residents were allowed into the buildings for a brief period to collect their belongings, but then spent the rest of...
23 September 2011
(Press release)
LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PRESS RELEASE
23 SEPTEMBER 2011
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) brought an urgent High Court application last night (Thursday 22 September 2011) on behalf of the residents of the Schubart Park B Building in the Pretoria city centre. The residents had been removed from the building after fires were lit during a protest against the lack of water and electricity for the past...