The Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) has slammed the #OperationDudula group which has recently been conducting “cleanup” operations targeting illegal foreign nationals in Soweto and other parts of Johannesburg in which they evicted them from their rented homes and informal trading stalls.
This comes after the group descended on Bara Taxi Rank and Turffontein this week and chased those they deemed to be illegal immigrants, accusing them of being responsible for criminality and of taking economic opportunities away from South Africans by hijacking stalls and breaking bylaws.
On Friday afternoon, the foundation held a dialogue on the recent evictions, which #OperationDudula activists also attended.
FHR's Sarah Motha said the foundation had immediately convened a meeting with a number of organisations, including those that represented foreign nationals, to establish the root cause of the problem and ways of combating it.
“We are largely appalled by this #OperationDudula movement. We know it is largely driven by unemployment and poverty and the corruption in the hands of the state and politicians,” Motha said.
Motha said the group had to direct their energy and frustration towards the government and the business sector as they had failed Africans in terms of creating socioeconomic opportunities.
Zimbabwean human rights activist Nobuhle Ajiti, who visited some of the illegal immigrants who had been evicted from taxi rank stalls, said they had told her that they had for years been renting the stalls from South Africans, contrary to allegations that they had hijacked them.
“I also do not see how an undocumented migrant can hijack and end up having a whole stall to own for years. Since that was their only source of income, I asked them what they were going to do, they did not know. Seeing them was so painful,” Ajiti said.
Ajiti said some of the evictees were even prepared to be taken back to their home countries after their goods were either confiscated or burnt.
“In the videos they made it seem like they were not taking anyone's goods but just asking illegal foreign nationals to leave. But the truth of the matter is that that is not what was happening and they were looting them and burning them,” she said.
Leaders of the controversial group, including Khanyisani Vilakazi, have however denied acts of violence and looting of goods belonging to foreign nationals and instead blamed law enforcement agencies, including the police, of having failed to deal with the growing issue undocumented foreign nationals.
Vilakazi maintained that the group would not stop its operation as those who were in the country illegally were mostly impossible to nab and hold accountable when they broke laws and committed crimes.
“These foundations look like they are only for foreign nationals. You people are living in your leafy suburbs and do not understand what we have to deal with on the ground. We are not going to allow lawlessness to happen in our country and we are not going to stop,” Vilakazi said.
Motha also weighed in on the recent inspections conducted by the EFF in restaurants in a bid to inspect employment ratio between South Africans and foreign nationals, as she said they fuelled xenophobia.
“We must all stand against attempts to make vulnerable people the scapegoats for the country's economic problems. We have to work together and find solutions,” she said.
The EFF had, however, pointed out that its controversial inspections were directed at owners and managers in the hospitality sector as it accuses them of largely employing foreign nationals because they were easy to exploit and pay less while deliberately shunning South Africans from opportunities.
