Chiara Carter
A campaign to fight xenophobia and raise awareness about refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants is to be launched next month.
The campaign is part of a three-year strategy drawn up by a consultant commissioned by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). It is being spearheaded by the National Consultative Forum on Refugee Affairs and includes the UNHCR, the Human Rights Commission, Lawyers for Human Rights and refugee forums in the provinces.
Chair of the Western Cape forum and member of the national forum Bea Abrahams said they were alarmed at the “rising sweep of xenophobia” in the past year, during which about 50 refugees had been killed countrywide.
The campaign aims to target government departments such as home affairs, health, welfare and correctional services as well as influencing policy- makers.
Workshops, information brochures and a media campaign are some of the ways the group hopes to raise public awareness.
North nominates a gang of … 16 000?
Sechaba ka’Nkosi
African National Congress branches in the Northern Province took their democratic duty a bit too far. They nominated 16 000 people for election next year – enough to fill the National Assembly, the National Council of Provinces, all nine provincial parliaments and the country’s entire local government system.
Provincial leaders are working against time to trim down its candidate list for provincial and national assemblies before finalising its nominations in two weeks.
When the province holds its conference to draft a final list on December 12, it will battle to reduce the number to the required 250 names for the provincial legislature, and nearly 80 for the national assembly.
What remains unclear is how the nomination process allowed such a huge number of people to be nominated.
Insiders say that, from the beginning of the process, there was no strategic co-ordination from provincial leaders. Branches were allowed to nominate as they pleased, a move slammed by critics as amateurish.
The list committee has tried to control the process but their initiative came too late.
List committee chair Jerry Ndou says that, while the process seems out of control, the provincial leadership is managing.
“These are very sensitive processes but we are not doing badly, given the circumstances,” notes Ndou.
But in the past week alone, the list was reduced from 7 500 names to around 5 000, before it suddenly sprouted again to 16 000 names.
As though that were not enough, there seems to be very little co-operation between the ANC and its allies in the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party and the South African National Civic Organisation.
In some meetings, the four are said to have produced different nominations and fought for endorsement from within one branch for hours.
As a compromise, branches end up consolidating all the lists into one and recommend them as their position.
Some of the top names are Deputy Minister of Tourism and Environmental Affairs Peter Mokaba, Premier Ngoako Ramathlodi and ANC women’s league president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
Provincial secretary Benny Boshielo defends the process as reflective of the democratic nature of debates within branches.
Says Boshielo: “We think the whole process has been a very healthy exercise, given the fact that the province is mainly rural. Most of the branches would like to have one of their members in Parliament. There is so much enthusiasm.”
Mokaba, confirming that he has been approached by a number of branches to avail himself, described the process as “interesting”.
“The province will have to win more than the 92% it won in the last election to put all those people in Parliament,” says Mokaba.