The failure of the Department of Home Affairs to deal with the vast backlog of asylum-seeker applications is resulting in unlawful mass deportations and escalating human rights abuses at the infamous Lindela Repatriation Centre, according to activists in the refugee rights field.
The Department of Home Affairs has come under fire after it deported 16 Burundian asylum seekers early on Wednesday this week, despite attempts by the individuals’ lawyers to obtain an urgent stay of deportation. According to Abeda Bhamjee, of the Wits Law Clinic, the department violated South African law in two ways.
An upcoming seminar will focus on whether a cultural underground still exists. Nadine Botha speaks to organiser Fred de Vries.
The fire in which 12 people died in Johannesburg’s CBD last week has highlighted the dangers faced daily by residents of the city’s numerous condemned buildings, who live without electricity or sanitation and are forced to cook on primus stoves and open fires.
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/ 30 January 2006
Global unemployment rose to record highs last year in spite of continued strong economic growth, meaning efforts to reduce poverty in a year of increased debt relief and development aid achieved very little. A global employment trends survey shows that half of the world’s 2,85-billion workers are existing on less than the -a-day poverty line — the same as a decade ago.
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/ 16 February 2002
DREW FORREST, Johannesburg | Friday IN a powerful parliamentary speech full of veiled signals and undercurrents, Minister of Home Affairs and Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi gave notice of his anger with his African National Congress coalition partner this week. Buthelezi was not alone in using the debate on President Thabo Mbeki’s state of […]
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/ 15 December 2000
David Beresford Another Country The first confidence trickster I came across was, I think, one of my brothers. I must have been six or seven years old and was harbouring certain suspicions about Santa Claus. I cannot remember what prompted the doubts; maybe it was a certain falsity of the “ho! ho! ho!” offered up […]
WEDNESDAY, 11.00AM: GAUTENG Lions rugby coach Ray Mordt and his assistants Tito Lupini and Hugo van As resigned and refused to coach the team on Tuesday, blaming some “senior World Cup contracted players” for making their jobs impossible. Dr Louis Luyt, president of the South African Rugby Football Union, stepped in to give the Lions […]
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/ 24 December 1996
Max Gebhardt On stock exchanges worldwide, share prices have been soaring to new heights on the back of strong bullish sentiment. Wall Street’s records, and its breaking of the all-important 6 000 barrier, inspired similar advances on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) all-share index. Compared with London and Wall Street, however, the JSE has lagged […]
THE advice to NGOs to “adapt or die” in a changing environment is becoming painfully repetitive. It is also superfluous, as we – the remaining NGOs –would not have survived until now if we had not constantly restructured, repositioned and transformed ourselves. In her response (“NGOs are not about to roll over”, April 19 to […]