Some Home Affairs mobile units not functioning in three provinces

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said three mobile units allocated to the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Free State were not fully operational due to mechanical problems.

Motsoaledi said the fleet belonged to the old fleet that was procured in the 2005/6 financial year.

“Some of the units were previously involved in accidents,” he said.

Motsoaledi was responding to parliamentary questions from DA MP Adrian Roos, who asked about the number of the department’s mobile units that were fully operational and also deployed on a day-to-day basis.

He said there were a total of 110 mobile units and 105 those were functional.

He said all the mobile units were deployed with a planned day-to-day schedule.

“This averages a total of 95% of the total units deployed on a day-to-day schedule to close the gaps where there is no Department of Home Affairs footprint and render services in remote rural areas.”

Motsoaledi also said 464 areas were visited by the mobile units between April and September 2022.

A further 46 areas were visited during the ministerial service delivery outreach programmes in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West to promote early birth registration and smart ID card products,” he said.

According to the minister, 111 916 smart ID applications were collected by the mobile units and 4 800 passport applications were allocated during the same period.

“A total number of 2 208 schools were visited by mobile units during the above period in different provinces,” Motsoaledi said.

Meanwhile, the department was saddled with a backlog of visa applications totalling 40 635, Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said.

Motsoaledi said the accumulation of visa applications was due to restriction of travel during Covid-19 pandemic.

“We did accumulate a lot of backlogs during the state of disaster as some services such as applications for permanent and temporary residence were closed due to the fact that international travel was suspended.

“In addition, in order to adhere to the Covid-19 regulations, we had to drastically reduce staff on duty to enable social distancing,” Motsoaledi said.

He said the backlogs were now standing at 40 365 since 2016.

The minister said his department has appointed 18 additional adjudicators who have since started work.

“They will spend the first 30 days in training and will start tackling the backlog on April 1, 2023. Managers from provinces have been mobilised to help with quality control,” he said.

Motsoaledi also said the department was currently reviewing the immigration permitting delegations as well as standard operating procedures.

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Suspected Islamist militants kill 19 people in village raid in eastern DRC

Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 19 people and burnt a medical facility in a raid on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) early on Sunday morning, said two regional officials and a resident. 

The attack, which occurred around 1am (23:00 GMT) in the village of Kirindera in North Kivu province, took place just a few kilometres from another attack on a village that killed at least 35 people last week.

The army blamed last week’s attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group based in eastern Congo that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State. A resident of a nearby village and a member of local civil society blamed Sunday’s attack on the ADF.

“The ADF arrived, they set fire to a hospital after looting it with medicines, and they set fire to a hotel,” said Sadame Patanguli, the resident.

He said the militants kidnapped several others, who are now missing. The details of the burned buildings and the death toll were confirmed by two regional officials.

The ADF was created in Uganda before moving to eastern Congo in the 1990s, and has been blamed for thousands of deaths in the last decade.

The killings have continued despite efforts by the army, which is also fighting the rebel group M23, whose offensive in recent months has displaced 600,000 people. Congo says the group is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, which Rwanda denies.

Meanwhile, public support for the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo, known as Monusco, has plummeted because of what local residents say is its inability to stem the violence.

A delegation from the UN Security Council toured North Kivu this weekend, including to a camp for displaced people.

“There are no magic solutions, it’s not the United Nations that will solve the problem on its own,” said Nicolas de Riviere, the French ambassador to the UN. “We need a political negotiation, we need a security solution

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Life in prison for murderer who threw a 23-year-old man out of seventh-floor

A 37-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering 23-year-old Shaun Douglas Chabalala, who was thrown out of a seventh-floor window of a block of flats in central Pretoria in 2018.

Dumkele “Ekere” Onyeghani appeared in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Monday, where he stood in the dock expressionless as the judgment was read out.

Magistrate Thembinkosi Ndwandwe started his judgment by going through the testimony of the State witnesses, followed by the version of the defence.

Ndwandwe accepted the version of Chabalala’s business partner, Given Mzamane, who was the only witness to the killing.

Mzamane testified that he and Chabalala had seen an online advert for a luxury camera that was being sold in Sunnyside.

They contacted the seller and they drove from Johannesburg to the Tamboti block of apartments in Sunnyside.

Once there, Onyeghani, who was at the entrance, greeted them and took them to his flat on the seventh floor.

As the two men entered the flat, they were met by two other men and attacked.

Mzamane managed to get away, but not before he witnessed two men throwing Chabalala out of the window.

Onyeghani pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and contravening the Immigration Act. He is a Nigerian national. 

Onyeghani claimed he was not at the flat on the day and that it was his flatmate who killed Chabalala.

His flatmate was arrested, but went missing after being released on bail in 2019.

Onyeghani`s version was rejected by the court, which took into account that he was identified within three seconds at an identity parade and that after the murder he went into hiding.

Police managed to track Onyeghani down to a house in Pretoria West through an informant.

When they tried to effect the arrest in October 2019, Onyeghani hid in the ceiling of the house, but was discovered after police brought the K9 unit in.

Ndwandwe found Onyeghani guilty of murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and for being in the country illegally as his permit to reside in South Africa had expired long before his arrest.

Straight after judgment, the court listened to sentencing arguments and proceeded to sentence the accused to life imprisonment for murder and 15 years for the robbery charge.

For contravening the Immigration Act, Onyeghani was sentenced to 12 months behind bars wholly suspended on the condition that he is deported once he has served his sentence for the murder and robbery counts.

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R2 000 per passport: Immigration officer arrested at OR Tambo, found with nine passports faking departure/entry

IOL | 13 March 2023

An immigration official at the OR Tambo International Airport and a police officer, are appearing in court for allegedly stamping passports of people who were not at the airport for departure and re-entry into South Africa.

Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has welcomed the arrest of an immigration official, and his alleged accomplice, a police officer, at the OR Tambo International Airport in Kempton Park.

Motsoaledi’s spokesperson Siya Qoza said the duo were arrested last week after the immigration official had been under observation for a while because of his “suspicious behaviour and suspicious lifestyle”.

“The immigration official had been under observation for some time due to his suspicious behaviour and suspicious lifestyle. The net closed in on him on Wednesday evening when he was caught red-handed, stamping nine passports of nationals from different countries as if those people had departed the country in February 2023 and returned on Wednesday,” Qoza said.

“Initial investigations have established that a runner brought the passports to the airport and handed them over to the policeman, who, using the fact that he was in uniform, went through security into the immigration area.”

An immigration official at the OR Tambo International Airport and a police officer, are appearing in court for allegedly stamping passports of people who were not at the airport for departure and re-entry into South Africa. 

The uniformed police officer then linked up with the immigration official, who proceeded to stamp the passports.

An undercover police officer caught and arrested them.

“It is believed that the immigration officer charged R2 000 for each of the passports he stamped. The arrested immigration and police officer are expected to appear at the Kempton Park Magistrate Court on Monday, 13 March 2023,” Qoza said.

The police have launched a manhunt for the runner who brought the passports to the airport, and the owners of the passports.

Motsoaledi said: “We are indebted to the brave and patriotic law enforcement officers for the arrest of each rascal that cheapens the status of our country. I am extremely encouraged by these patriotic acts and I am even more determined to continue the fight against corruption in Home Affairs”.

He said the stamping of passports for departure and re-entry into South Africa has far-reaching consequences.

“The act of stamping passports for departure and re-entry of people who remain in our country is extremely worrying. The owners of these passports can commit crimes in the country and claim that it could not have been them because they were ‘not in the country’ at the time of the commission of the crimes.

“They can use our departure and re-entry stamps on their passports to argue their cases in court. This is simply inexcusable. It makes foreign nationals with bad intentions believe that South Africa is up for the take,” Motsoaledi said.

The minister has issued a stern warning to criminals operating within the OR Tambo International Airport and other ports of entry that “they are being watched every single day and law enforcement will pounce on them at any moment”.

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Good news for wine as foreign investors pile into SA 

News24 | 13 March 2023

• There is a trend of consolidation in SA's wine industry and foreign investors are piling in, says local body Vinpro.

• Local wine operations offer value for money, and offshore groups are investing in medium-sized South African wine brands with growth potential.

• The Stellenbosch wine region is 'comparable with the best French areas,' which is attracting interest.

Foreign groups are making significant investments into South Africa’s wine industry, and industry body Vinpro says this will help local brands to go global.

At least 15 large South African wineries and related businesses have been acquired by foreign entities in recent years, with some notable deals in the past few months, according to Vinpro, an organisation that represents local wine producers and cellars.

In February, the local unit of French winemaking giant Grands Chais de France (GCF) bought Villiera, a well-known Stellenbosch farm. Just four months before that, GCF acquired the nearby Neethlingshof winery.

Another French group, Advini, has invested in Klein Zalze, Le Bonheur, Ken Forrester, Stellenbosch Vineyards, and L'Avenir.

American, German and other European investors have bought into the local industry as well. For instance, San Francisco-based investor Eileses Capital acquired Warwick Wine Estate in 2018.

"There is a clear trend of consolidation in the sector," says Vinpro MD Rico Basson.

Offshore groups are investing in medium-sized South African wine brands with growth potential, and the transactions will give local brands access to global distribution networks, Basson said.

Those entities are expanding their portfolios, and the Stellenbosch wine region is "comparable with the best French areas".

Moreover, South African estates offer "value for money from an investment perspective", and some deals have targeted farms that were struggling financially.

"The trend is in my view very similar to what is happening across the world, where global entities would integrate backward," Basson said.

In New Zealand – a world leader in sauvignon blanc wines – the top four brands belong to foreign multinationals such as Constellation. "This is partly the reason why New Zealand sauvignon blanc does exceptionally well in the US."

Aside from the brands that have been acquired, Basson said the wave of consolidation would elevate South Africa’s status in the global wine market more broadly.

"What I find interesting is that most of the foreign investors allow the domestic family to integrate in the business or continue. They also have a strong focus on the premiumisation of wine."

In most cases, the transactions include a strong focus on community projects, he added.

Basson said a number of other transactions involving local buyers had also been completed in recent years.

According to Wines of South Africa, the value of the country’s wine exports declined 2.4% to R9.9 billion in 2022.

The decline was attributed to shipping constraints at the port of Cape Town linked to bad weather in April 2022 and a two-week long strike by port workers in October.

South Africa’s largest wine export markets are the UK and Germany.

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