The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa and the Wits Law Clinic have vowed to approach the Constitutional Court to keep Gauteng’s refugee shelters open.
This comes after Pretoria High Court Judge Ephraim Makgoba on Tuesday dismissed an urgent application to keep the shelters open for the next two months, pending the introduction of a proper reintegration plan.
One of the legal representatives of the applicants, Stuart Wilson, said they were ”very disappointed” with the ruling.
He contended the judgement did not sufficiently address the constitutional rights of their clients — people who had been treated in the ”most shocking and disgusting way” in their own countries and South Africa.
Wilson said the ruling had been wrong in law. The centre and the law clinic intend lodging an urgent appeal in the Constitutional Court on Wednesday.
Makgoba earlier said the government is not violating any rights of the more than 4 000 refugees at present housed in temporary refugee shelters in Gauteng and is under no obligation to come up with a reintegration plan.
The ruling means the government will be able to go ahead with its plans to dismantle the camps by Friday.
The judge said it is not as if the government had not been managing the disaster, which followed in the wake of wide-spread xenophobic attacks on foreigners in the country, but said ”it had to end somewhere”.
The Gauteng government believes it has done all it can to help reintegrate people displaced by xenophobic violence, and will close all its shelters on Friday, it said following the ruling.
”Really, they have been given enough time … and it was extended for a few days. We think that is enough time to arrange alternative accommodation,” spokesperson Thabo Masebe said. — Sapa