Heartfelt gratitude to Home Affairs and others who are helping homeless people

As we enter what is meant to be a jolly and peaceful season, during which we should focus on giving and being forgiving, I will try not to spoil it for everyone, including myself, by dedicating my festive season columns to the ill informed, pig-headed, arrogant know-it-alls whose job descriptions include the words “addressing homelessness”, at City and provincial level.

We all need a break from having to deal with situations where a provincial department, without any discussion or consultation, for a third time in three years changes its mind on what to do with the funds it has been allocated and accumulated since its 2021 decision to fund its first new (since 1994) and much-needed mega shelter and service centre for those living on the streets of the CBD in Cape Town.

Last year, they changed their minds about the location and focus of the “new shelter”, whose budget had exploded by R13 million and now, a year later, we are informed all the money (now close on R20m) is going to be wasted on extending shelters that those living on the streets refuse to go to and which have proved ineffective in reducing the numbers of people living on the streets.

And no one says a word. No demands for explanations. No shocked “how dare you!” No demand for investigations into such a unilateral, ill-informed mismanagement of a crucial mandate. Nothing!

But, this also being known as the “silly season”, I will park that there for now. I am hoping I will soon be told it was all just a silly joke! (Ha! Ha!, or should I say “Ho! Ho!”?)

I am, however, going to celebrate another state organ that is, without a doubt, considered the worst state department to deal with. Truth be told, I don’t think I have seen a positive story about it all year. Yep, you guessed it, Home Affairs.

I, of all people, am not only going to change that, but I am trying with gratitude, sincerity and admiration.

Before launching a campaign on World Homeless Day to get people living on the streets their IDs, I approached the department’s minister, with a request for assistance �` a 50% reduction of the cost of re-issuing IDs to the many South African citizens who our Everybody Counts assessments have found to be living on our streets and who have no form of identification.

The response was immediately positive.

We eventually had so many on our list, that covering the other 50% became an impossible task. We went back and spent the best part of two months nagging the department heads and director-general to waive the cost, as they do for the youth and elderly. At least for the duration of our count and assessments.

Earlier this week, on opening my Gmail account to check my emails, my eyes saw the words “has been approved”.

With the amount of spam I receive, I didn’t want to get too excited, but on closer inspection, there it was. In black and white.

And this coming week tomorrow and on Thursday and Friday, we will be doing free IDs for those living on the streets, in front of the wonderful Service Dining Room, which has partnered with me on the venture.

From the minister’s office, who delegated it as a “matter of urgency”, to the staff I had the pleasure of engaging with at the provincial office and the co-ordinator assisting us, I have experienced nothing but the best and friendliest of service.

Every department head voted in favour of doing this in their recommendation to the director-general.

I want them all to know how well this reflects on them and the department.

I publicly applaud you all.

I know from experience, that with an ID in hand or safely stored with us while we are living on the streets, should they wish to use the added service we have arranged for them, a large number of the beneficiaries will progress off the streets a lot more swiftly and on their own steam, than would otherwise be the case.

Thank you to all who have been instrumental in helping the unfortunate people living on our streets to rightfully reclaim their identity and dignity.

A special thanks to the Department of Home Affairs, The Service Dining Room, The Cape Argus, the SAPS, the Good Party and everyone at Outsider.

Have a great week, everyone!

Closing the ‘holes’ in porous borders requires co-operation

This past week, local and global media outlets reported on South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) intercepting buses transporting some 443 unaccompanied children at the Beitbridge crossing on the border with Zimbabwe.

South Africa’s borders have become notorious for being open and unprotected.

Criminals have, for some time, been doing as they please, with regular reports of illegal migrants from countries as far as Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and others walking into South Africa unchecked. Up to now, the criminal incidents have involved only foreign men.

There have also been cases where criminals have been caught smuggling stolen luxury cars from South Africa to countries such as Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Others, such as Prophet Shepherd Bushiri from Malawi, have used South Africa’s porous borders to evade justice in South Africa. Bushiri is enjoying himself in Malawi under the protection of his country.

It is the first time that trafficking of children has featured on this massive scale in South Africa.

Indeed, the interception of these children might signal at least one of two things:

*Criminals are becoming more daring as they feel they own South Africa’s borders and can escalate human trafficking to new more dangerous levels targeting children.

*The work of the BMA is gathering momentum as the agency is becoming better at preventing and detecting cross-border criminality. Either way, it is good news to see the BMA appearing to be taking its work seriously and keeping the South African public up to date.

Perhaps there is a need to delve deeper into the story of the 443 children to establish the truth about their origins, identity and parentage. According to some reports, the children were carried in 42 buses originating from Zimbabwe, a neighbouring country.

It is thought that the children might have been placed in the buses to come to South Africa to join relatives during the festive season. It is, however, difficult to understand how the parents or relatives came to take the security of their children for granted. Indeed, when travelling within South Africa, there are strict procedures for transporting children in public transport locally and over long distances.

A verifiable identity and contact details of the parents or guardian are a primary requirement. In this case it appears this was not the case. It would appear the children were discovered by the BMA but were allowed passage by the Zimbabwean side.

All this suggests that the BMA is single-handedly dealing with border problems without the co-operation of the Zimbabwean side. If this is the case, it suggests that the BMA will, in the long run, struggle to control our borders if its efforts are undermined by neighbouring countries.

It is difficult to imagine that the Zimbabweans do not care about the physical security of their children. However, if they do care, it is perhaps likely that smuggling people, including Zimbabwean children, adults and goods, across the border has become a big criminal enterprise.

The criminal nature of the enterprise appears to thrive on the most vulnerable people among Zimbabweans, people who, perhaps out of ignorance, find themselves taken advantage of and are misled to undertake risky journeys out of their country.

It would be a welcome development if the BMA were to issue regular detailed reports of the big cross-border cases to expose the identity of the criminals, in particular the bus operators and their partners in crime. Public reports of this nature are useful because they go beyond meeting the needs to back up court cases in the respective countries. They also serve to inform a wider debate of the nature of cross-border criminals and what to do to prevent it harming the interests of neighbouring countries.

There is an urgent need to gauge the scale of cross-border criminality and the extent to which human trafficking is involved.

It is extremely concerning that there appears to be no established cross-border policing procedures and protocols in the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) community.

Without cross-border policing, and related activities to ensure co-operation on a regionwide justice system, it is small wonder the SADC is hardly worth the paper it is written on. The value of cross-border policing is primarily to prevent the use of borders as a haven for criminals operating in the neighbouring countries.

There is, however, a cost associated with all policing and execution of justice. It appears each country suffers its own financial pain silently but there is no sharing of the criminal cost burden.

The presence of many foreign nationals in South Africa, including many Zimbabweans, is not matched by similar numbers of South Africans residing in neighbouring countries. This means that South Africa is single-handedly carrying the burden of SADC policing and justice. Indeed, the fact that the BMA took responsibility for identifying unaccompanied children in buses from Zimbabwe underscores this point.

The cost of immigration, whether legal or not, to South Africa is huge and is probably rising. If this is the case, it is highly likely that the sustainability of agencies such as the BMA, SAPS and others will, in time, fall because of escalating costs. As we all know, the revenue base of the South African government is also in decline because of declining national productivity, a consequence of the unrelenting electricity crisis that remains with us.

In fact, if we add the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, the economy requires extreme drastic measure to be in reasonable shape. Investing is reducing regional SADC-wide cross-border criminality is definitely one such priority to achieve economic recovery.

Civil society slams ‘poorly drafted’ White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection

Representatives of various civil society organisations criticised the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection at a Lawyers for Human Rights roundtable on Monday, describing the draft policy as ‘vague’ and ‘poorly drafted’. 

Civil society representatives have slammed the recently published White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection as being flawed and poorly drafted. Concerns have been raised about the draft policy’s alleged attempts to “scapegoat” the migrant community in the lead-up to South Africa’s 2024 general elections. 

The Department of Home Affairs gazetted the white paper on 10 November, calling for a “complete overhaul” of the migration ¬system in South Africa. The public has until 19 January 2024 to provide comments.

“While in the ordinary course of things, we would… have welcomed the good intention to administer a complete overhaul of frameworks relating to our immigration framework… we look at the white paper and we see it against the backdrop of the sociopolitical context… of the significant surge in deadly xenophobic attacks that have happened since 2008. We also see it in the context of the increasingly anti-migrant sentiment that is being purported by the ANC,” said Nabeelah Mia, head of Penal Reform Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights.

“The white paper itself is an attempt to scapegoat a community who unfortunately do not have the voting power in a bid to win votes, rather than the governing party taking responsibility for its failing governance over the past 28 years, leading to higher rates of inequality and unemployment.”

Mia was speaking at a Lawyers for Human Rights roundtable on Monday. The event provided a platform for civil society stakeholders to discuss the contents of the white paper and its implications for the rights of refugees, citizens and migrants in South Africa.

“The white paper itself, as a policy document, has significant flaws. It was quite vague and shocking in its failure to provide an empirical foundation for its proposed policy reform,” said Mia.

This sentiment was echoed by James Chapman, head of advocacy at the Scalabrini Centre, who described the document as “poorly drafted”, with “sweeping statements” that were not backed by evidence.

“Rather than bringing itself into line with our constitutional jurisprudence that has been built up over the years as it relates to the rights of migrants �` specifically asylum seekers and refugees �` it is proposing to alter the law to prevent court challenges and… that doesn’t match up,” continued Mia.

A long process

The policy framework proposed in the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection is intended to replace three existing national policies:

• The Citizenship Act 88 of 1995;

• The Immigration Act, which is act number 13 of 2002; and

• The Refugees Act 130 of 1998.

“This is not a new situation. Home Affairs has made various attempts to overhaul and harmonise these same pieces of legislation. The difference in this particular situation is that they’ve never tried to introduce one piece of legislation dealing with all of these issues,” said Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, Africa director of programmes for the International Commission of Jurists.

Ramjathan-Keogh said there would likely be a long consultation process before the finalisation of the proposed policy, possibly spanning years.

“This white paper has been four years in the making, so we can expect the consultation process to extend for a further period. We can see that Home Affairs would like it to be a very short consultation process based on the very short period of time they’ve given us to make submissions but we anticipate that the final bill will be many years away and potentially will look very different to the current proposals,” she said.

With regard to refugee protection measures, the white paper proposes that South Africa review and withdraw from the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 UN Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, with the aim of rejoining these with reservations allowing for the limitation of refugees’ socioeconomic rights.

It further proposes that sections of the Citizenship Act should be reviewed, including those relating to citizenship by naturalisation, and that the Births and Deaths Registration Act be repealed in its entirety. The draft policy suggests that a register of all people granted citizenship by naturalisation should be kept by the Minister of Home Affairs.

Some recommended changes in terms of the immigration framework are that the Border Management Authority Act should be reviewed to align it with the new immigration and citizenship policy framework; and that the powers of immigration officers and the Inspectorate for Immigration Services should be strengthened.

False claims around citizenship issues

In order to become a South African citizen, the current legislation requires that a person must have a South African parent, according to Thandeka Chauke, head of the Statelessness Project at Lawyers for Human Rights. 

There are exceptions to this, with processes that allow people to pursue citizenship if they would otherwise be stateless or when they are a child born to permanent residents in the country. There is also a pathway to citizenship by naturalisation for children who are born to non-South Africans, according to Chauke.

“The one thing [the white paper] has said is a claim that the current citizenship law is creating an easy pathway to South African citizenship for refugees and migrants, and therefore [it] is proposing a more cautious approach to citizenship… It says in the white paper that the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation… must be more stringent,” said Chauke, adding that the rationale behind this proposal was that the government needed to be protected from financial strain on its limited resources.

However, the claim that the pathway to citizenship by naturalisation was too easy was “simply false”, she continued.

Chauke referenced a recent article co-written by Loren Landau, co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab at the University of the Witwatersrand. The article stated that based on the information in the white paper, 150,997 people in South Africa have been granted citizenship by naturalisation since the 2002 Immigration Act.

“That figure only represents 0.2% of the population. So, the white paper does paint a false picture… that there’s so many non-South Africans that are accessing citizenship through naturalisation,” said Chauke.

She argued that safeguards already existed to prevent the abuse of processes for gaining citizenship, but that these were not laid out in the white paper.

“What we’ve now seen since 1995 is a slow and steady move to restrict access to that citizenship. While the white paper itself doesn’t… come right out and say what it intends to do, I think when we track that and look at the patterns of Home Affairs’ approach to interpretation of the citizenship law and its failure to effectively implement the laws, we can preempt what is going to come in the bill,” she said.

Pastor, former Absa branch manager and Pakistani national found guilty of R1 million credit card fraud

Three people, one of them being a pastor, have been found guilty of credit card fraud in which Absa Bank suffered a loss of R1 million.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said the trio were convicted in the Eastern Cape High Court on various charges.

The accused are 30-year-old Pakistani national, Muhammad Afzal Yaseen, 46-year-old pastor, Khaya Honeman Nocanda, and former Absa manager of the Middelburg branch, Mandisa Mirriam Ndletyana, 33.

NPA provincial spokesperson, Luxolo Tyali said the three accused were part of an initial seven-member syndicate that was initially indicted on 255 counts.

“This involved an elaborate scheme involving the fraudulent acquisition of credit cards from the Middelburg branch of Absa Bank in the period between August 2019 to December 2019,” explained Tyali. 

In court this week, the NPA said Yaseen was convicted of participating in the affairs of an enterprise, through a pattern of racketeering activity, 17 counts of trafficking in persons, 49 counts of fraud and 14 counts of theft.

Nocanda was found guilty of managing the operations of an enterprise in contravention of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, as well as participating in the affairs of the enterprise through a pattern of racketeering, eight counts of fraud, four theft charges, two counts of money laundering and four of acquisition, possession or use of proceeds of unlawful activities.

Ndletyana was found guilty of participating in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering and three counts of fraud.

Tyali said before the commencement of the trial, one of the accused died and a further two Pakistani nationals, who were out on bail, absconded “presumably back to their country of origin”.

“Prosecution also had to be stopped against one former bank employee due to the stroke she suffered which prevented her from continuing with her defence.”

In explaining the case, Tyali said Yaseen and his accomplices were part of an enterprise whose objective was to defraud Absa Bank by securing credit cards on a false and fraudulent basis in the names of third parties whom they trafficked from the Beaufort West in the Western Cape to Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape. 

“The more than 27 victims were transported under pretences of there being employment for them in Graaff-Reinet, ostensibly at a business owned by another Pakistani national,” Tyali said.

“The victims were misled into believing that they needed to open bank accounts at the Middelburg branch of Absa Bank into which their future salary payments would be made.

“They were sent to Beyers Naude Municipality offices where they were incited to obtain false proof of residence documents.”

Tyali said the victims were given false salary advice slips and then taken to Middelburg Absa Bank to apply for credit cards.

“Upon favourable outcomes of the said credit applications, limits of which ranged between R10,000 and R35,000 per person were granted,” Tyali said.

“Yaseen and members of the enterprise would take control of the cards and would proceed to empty the relevant loan accounts, by way of incremental cash withdrawals.

“The victims would be compensated with small amounts and transported back to Beaufort West, still jobless.”

Nocanda, who managed the Middelburg leg of the enterprise, deceived members of his church into believing that he was able to assist them in improving their socio-economic circumstances. 

“With the assistance of Ndletyana and the other bank official, he used the same false documentation as Yaseen to secure credit cards from the same bank branch.”

Tyali said once the credit cards were approved, the pastor took control of them.

“The victims were offered a choice of any item in the store, up to the value of R5,000 per person,” Tyali said.

“Nocanda would then pay for these items with the proceeds of the fraudulent activity, thus laundering the money through the business of the enterprise. The members of the enterprise would share the remaining spoils among themselves.”

According to the NPA, the syndicate was exposed after a Pakistani national alerted the Absa Fraud Hotline.

“This person further risked his life by even testifying in court on behalf of the State.”

Sentencing is expected in January.

It is further alleged that during the initial stages of the trial, Nocanda, while still out on bail, allegedly attempted to have the investigating officer as well as several witnesses murdered by approaching a traditional healer and enlisting hitmen to commit the murder.

“The plan failed and his bail was withdrawn. His case relating to the attempted murder has been remanded for trial to commence in 2024.”