When a UK union official was refused entry to South Africa, the Home Affairs Ministry had to take a fresh look at its inherited `stoplist’, writes Stefaans BrUmmer
THE Department of Home Affairs still maintains a blacklist of “undesirable” visitors to South Africa — currently about 3 000 people. Now Deputy Minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants it reviewed after a prominent labour leader was barred entry at Johannesburg International Airport.
Sisulu this week said she had to “apologise profusely” to British union official Roy Jones when he was detained at the airport for the better part of a day last month. She is planning to set up a review committee to expunge political inclusions and set strict rules on who may be blacklisted.
The list, officially called a “stoplist”, first made headlines when it was discovered entertainer Frank Sinatra was on it — supposedly because of his “mafia” links — when he wanted to visit South Africa for the 1981 opening of the Sun City Superbowl. His name was removed and he performed at the opening ceremony.
Sisulu said when Jones arrived with an International Labour Organisation delegation last month he was detained by immigration officials. Three hours after his arrival, she was called to deal with it. “I contacted my department … They said he had been put on the list in 1984. Then I knew it was nonsense.” Another three hours later, on her instructions, Jones was allowed entry.
She said the main item she found in a Home Affairs file on Jones was a clipping from the Star newspaper, dated 1984, on his support in an Orange Free State miners’ strike of Cyril Ramaphosa, then- secretary general of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Sisulu, who was appointed home affairs deputy minister at the end of June, subsequently found the same fate had befallen an African National Congress cadre, Alex Mombaris — who escaped from prison and fled the country after he was jailed in the 1970s for sabotage — when he tried to return to South Africa recently.
“We’ll never know how many others had to be rescued from the airports. These are the two we know about.”
Sisulu’s queries with Home Affairs officials led her to discover the stoplist had numbered as many as 18 000 towards the end of the 1980s — and that it included Michael Jackson at one stage. When the way had to be cleared for exiles to return to South Africa as a result of the post-1990 negotiations, Home Affairs and the police and intelligence services embarked on a review. The stoplist was honed down to about 3 000 before the 1994 elections.
But she said she was still not happy with the inherited list. “People could be put on the stoplist merely for attracting bad publicity and that is why I want a committee to review it … It took so much money, such an elaborate system to keep apartheid going. It is still going to cost us money to dismantle it.”
Sisulu said Home Affairs director general Piet Colyn had been helpful, but she questioned whether lower- ranking officials who had to maintain the list after 1994 necessarily “have an understanding of the policies of the new government”.
She accepted blame on the part of the new government for the slow pace of reform in the department. “We have not made any serious attempts to say this is what we want … Then, when things go wrong, we ask why they did not happen in line with our policies.” Plans were afoot to re-train Home Affairs officials and make the department “humane”.
Her intended review committee would expunge unnecessary names and set rules on who should be included in future. In line with international practice, only crime suspects would be debarred from entering the country on the advice of organisations like Interpol. The new stoplist would remain confidential because of constraints involved in the fight against crime.
Sisulu, an ANC appointee, said she was getting on well with Home Affairs Minister and Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. “At a personal level he is one of the gentlest people, very different from the public perception I had of him … I have been — touch wood — pleasantly surprised.”