Africa-Press – South-Africa. “When the South African government is faced with failure, it diverts attention to immigrants, so that we start to fight our brothers who are also facing the same social economic ills,” says activist Nandi Vanqa–Mgijima.
On Monday, Vanqa–Mgijima joined about a hundred people, who marched through the streets of Cape Town’s city centre to Parliament to mark Human Rights Day and to ask the government to actively intervene in ongoing xenophobic attacks and campaigns across the country.
In a memo addressed to the ANC, the marchers asked for the immediate arrest and prosecution of leaders and participants in campaigns using threats and violence against foreign nationals.
They also demanded an assessment of the actions by people under the banner of Operation Dudula and losses experienced by informal traders during these recent actions in Johannesburg.
The march was organised by the Concerned Citizens of the Western Cape and, according to its the memo, is endorsed by 15 organisations, which include the Congolese Civil Society of South Africa, United Family (UniFam), Manenberg Safety Forum, Sisterhood Movement, and the Ubuntu Rural Women and Youth Movement, among others.
Anti-xenophobia group is challenging the JMPD’s prohibition on march
The group handed the memo to Parliament’s senior protection officer, Ronwyn Petersen, after an hour of waiting for a politician to come out. Officials were given seven days to respond.
A protester, from Kivu in the DRC, said she was separated from her family when she fled war in 2009.
“I remember returning from school to a chaotic situation and following people coming to South Africa. I applied for asylum and got rejected. My case is on appeal,” she said.
“How can South Africans discriminate against black people? The government doesn’t care about refugees at all,” she said.
Vanqa–Mgijima said:
Wendy Pekeur, of the Ubuntu Rural Women and Youth Movement, said farmworkers in Robertson and Ceres were currently fighting over jobs they claim are being given to foreign nationals, some of whom are undocumented.
The movement, in its statement, said: “Home Affairs must get its house in order. They delay issuing documents and people get arrested.”
The joint movement called for the immediate reopening of the Refugee Reception Centres.
Pekeur said this would allow Home Affairs to issue and process documents for asylum seekers and refugees.
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