Programme News
5 February 2015
(News)
LHR's Kayan Leung addressed the issue of xenophobic violence across South Africa on the Voice of Wits' programme Law Focus.
The show is aired across four community radio stations including in Alexandra (Gauteng), Phalaborwa (Limpopo), Alfred Nzo Community Radio (Eastern Cape) and Radio Riverside (Northern Cape).
To hear Kayan Leung's interview listen here:
5 February 2015
(News)
Liesl Heila Muller
Attorney, Head of the Statelessness Project, Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme
What does Lawyers for Human Rights’ work on statelessness look like?
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) is an implementing partner to the UNHCR for statelessness. We focus on advocacy for the protection of stateless persons and solutions to statelessness in South Africa, including...
3 February 2015
(News)
The South African government’s hardening attitude toward foreigners seeking refuge in the country may be fueling intolerance toward immigrants that exploded into attacks and looting in townships, according to security analysts and human rights lawyers.
At least five people, including a baby, have been killed in violence that began on Jan. 18 in Soweto, in southwestern Johannesburg, when...
2 February 2015
(Press release)
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), South African NGO Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Mozambican Mine Workers Association (AMIMO) are together finding sustainable solutions for migrant mineworkers and their families who cannot access the social security benefits they are entitled, which include healthcare, pension schemes and worker compensation.
This is due to a range of...
30 January 2015
(News)
An Indian company this week declared its intention to mine in a critical water catchment area in Mpumalanga, just one year after the area was proclaimed a protected area.
Atha-Africa Ventures called a meeting with landowners in the Mabola protected environment, where the company claims to have a right to mine coal.
Mabola is one of five important water sources in Mpumalanga that were proclaimed...
28 January 2015
(News)
The attacks on foreign owned businesses in Johannesburg last week and the refusal of many South Africans to acknowledge the xenophobic impulse behind these attacks – as well as the odious justifications for such attacks – are, sadly, not that surprising. After all, the stench of apartheid-thinking (and the false sense of South African exceptionalism that it reflects) lingers on twenty...
24 January 2015
(Press release)
The xenophobic violence spreading throughout Soweto and surrounding areas in Johannesburg is indicative of a lack of tolerance and compassion for foreign nationals trying to make a living in South Africa.
Lawyers for Human Rights is shocked and disappointed by the blatant disregard for human life in these attacks and calls for a swift and efficient end to the violence.
So far, at least three...
21 January 2015
(News)
Mokopane, Limpopo, is a town on the brink. It’s on the brink of complete political meltdown, after years of factional fighting over corruption among municipal leaders. It could also be on the brink of a newfound prosperity, with a major platinum mine being built on its outskirts – on land previously used for small-scale subsistence farming. Some locals say they weren’t consulted...
16 January 2015
(News)
Home Affairs staff act as though they’re exempt from the law, court judgments and the constitution, writes Carmel Rickard.Johannesburg - It was a good start to the writing year: a strong, important judgment by a senior judge, expressing his concern about officials of the Department of Home Affairs, who act as though they are above the law.
But the responses from readers over the past week...
13 January 2015
(News)
Raesetsa Makgabo was paid 5,250 South African rand (about $450 U.S.) to allow a Canadian mining company to begin drilling on her maize fields.
The two men took the cash from an envelope, counted it carefully and spread it on the table in front of Raesetsa Makgabo in her village home. It was exactly R5,250.
She says she remembers vividly what the men said next: They told her to take the money...