Women and child refugees have been detained at the Riet Family Care Centre in Krugersdorp, the executive manager of the Krugersdorp municipality, Jorrie Jordaan, said on Monday.
Jordaan said the health conditions of the children had deteriorated after spending four nights in the open next to the R28 road.
”It was totally unacceptable for the children to be spending nights in the cold,” he said.
Jordaan said the men would be detained at police stations.
He could not say what charges the refugees faced, stating that they could be charged with a road traffic offence — which was illegally occupying land by the roadside, endangering traffic as well as endangering their own lives.
Jordaan said the local authority was still studying Section 11 of the Child Care Act.
All detainees were expected to appear in the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, six armoured police trucks arrived at the R28 roadside refugee camp outside Randfontein, and police requested women and children to line up and board the trucks.
The refugees had been given until Monday to move from the area, where they have been living since being taken to the Lindela repatriation centre, which detains and deports people found to be in the country illegally.
People began picking up their belongings, or stood around watching.
By 5pm, police were still loading women and children on to trucks on the R28, stating that they were being taken to ”a safe place”.
The R28 between Randfontein and Krugersdorp was closed to traffic during the police operation.
NGOs and the media were ordered through a loudhailer to move across the road and police on the scene did not want to speak to the media.
The foreigners were moved to the Lindela facility on the West Rand last week for their documents to be verified after they declined an offer to register at a camp in Glenanda accommodating people displaced by the xenophobic violence of May.
In terms of a government arrangement, residents at the camp who could not produce documents were invited to register their details in exchange for being allowed to stay in the country for six months.
Some residents feared that this would cancel existing agreements with the Department of Home Affairs that secured their right to be in the country, and thus declined to register.
Once their documents were verified at Lindela they were told they were free to go. The local authority wanted them to move on the grounds that they were violating by-laws by living on the side of the road.
The refugees have said they were afraid to return to the communities they fled from during the violence.
Earlier, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was registering the asylum-seekers and refugees camping there for voluntary repatriation to their home countries.
Attempts by the South African Press Association to get comment from UNHRC spokesperson Yusuf Hassan were unsuccessful.
Foreigners, mainly from Africa’s Great Lakes region, have said they had opted to return home. — Sapa