Joshua Amupadhi
SOUTH AFRICANS seeking fortunes in Angola’s fabled diamond fields have fallen foul of the government’s crackdown on illegal immigrants as the ruling party, the MPLA, tries to prove it has stopped using South African mercenaries in ongoing skirmishes against the opposition, Unita.
This is one reason given by the Angolan government for what has looked like xenophobia following arrests of hundreds of foreigners recently, including scores of South Africans.
The Angolan government has said that all the South Africans arrested and deported back to South Africa had failed to fulfil immigration requirements. But most of those deported said they were in possession of legal documents and that they were being wrongfully targeted.
An Angolan official in the Pretoria embassy, Jorge Morais, denied South Africans were specific targets. He said: “We have been accused by Unita of continuing to use mercenaries, therefore we are making sure that they don’t complain about us using foreigners. We are also in the process of organising society, so we have to make sure that foreigners meet our immigration requirements.”
The Angolan government employed former South African Defence Force soldiers, through the Pretoria-based company Executive Outcomes, to train its troops after Unita went back to war after losing the 1992 elections.
Among those arrested and then deported from Angola in the latest drive against foreigners were about 40 members of the British mining company Branch Energy. Some of the men are South Africans and had previously worked for Executive Outcomes.
Last week’s arrests of former spy Craig Williamson and four more South African diamond miners added to the confusion about aliens being detained in Angola.
South African ambassador to Luanda Roger Ballard-Tremeer said they were arrested in an Angolan government operation called Cancer II “to rid the country of undesirable foreigners who are plundering the Angolan economy”.
The four diamond miners have been set free and would be deported back to South Africa this week, Ballard-Tremeer said.
But Williamson remained in prison, Ballard- Tremeer said, although he had learnt about this from his own sources, and not officially. “We are still trying to find out what Craig is in for and we believe he will be there for a while.” He said the Angolan authorities “haven’t even told us that he’s there [in jail]”.
An Angolan official was quoted on South African radio saying Williamson was arrested because he was trading while on a tourism visa. But Ballard-Tremeer said it was unlikely Williamson’s documents were not in order because he had been doing business in Angola and had been travelling in and out of the country since 1991.
Several of the South Africans who were arrested and deported told the M&G this week that the arrests of foreigners points to the confusion and corruption of the Angolan immigration system.
Ballard-Tremeer said some South Africans had obtained what they may have thought were valid work permits from Angolan immigration officials inside the country, but that these were not valid.
He said the only valid permits were issued to foreigners at Angola’s diplomatic missions.
Gert Potgieter from White River was among 18 South Africans working in the diamond fields who was deported from Angola last month. He said he had obtained his work permit in Pretoria before he left, but was still arrested.
Potgieter said he has since been told by the Angolan embassy in Pretoria he was now welcome back in Angola. He had decided to “return soon”, he said.