In the media
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2 December 2014
The Guardian
In 2010, Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a transgender woman, was imprisoned in Malawi for getting engaged to a man. Pardoned and freed, she now lives in exile in South Africa. Mark Gevisser reports on an uneasy triumph for the global LGBT rights movement
“Gays Engage!”
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28 November 2014
The Daily Vox
Ethiopian refugee Badesa Fokora has died in a Johannesburg hospital after suffering double kidney failure and being refused treatment for it, despite the fact that he had been lying in a hospital bed for a month. Although doctors at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg were aware of his life-threatening condition, they refused him treatment on the basis that he was not a South Africa citizen.
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28 November 2014
GroundUp
Lack of mattresses, a leaking roof, lack of hot water and insufficient access to medical treatment: Pollsmoor’s facility for awaiting trial prisoners has been slammed by civil society organisations for what they call “several concerns regarding conditions of detention at the facility.”
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25 November 2014
Pretoria News
Potentially life-saving treatment came too late for a 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee to South Africa, who was due to ask the high court on Tuesday to force health authorities to give him dialysis.
Badesa Fokora died shortly before Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) could fight the system on his behalf.
Fokora had been refused dialysis at the Helen Joseph Hospital – he did not qualify for a kidney transplant because hewas a foreign national.
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25 November 2014
Algoa FM
Lawyers For Human Rights says it's outraged at a law that prevented a foreign national who's a refugee in the country, from receiving life-saving medical treatment.
The organisation will have to withdraw it's urgent application on the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday morning, after their client, 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee, Badesa Fokora, died while waiting for the matter to be heard.
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19 November 2014
South African Press Association
On a cloudy Monday afternoon, an imposing group of watchful, youthful men and women in bright yellow bibs religiously congregate along Thabo Sehume street in central Pretoria. They do so almost every day, in different streets.
Their work is partly inscribed on their bright yellow bibs - Pretoria central community policing forum (CPF). Some in the group are wearing police issue black boots, some are in the trademark SA Police Service blue fatigues.
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13 November 2014
African Arguments
On 4th November the UN launched a global campaign to end statelessness within ten years. I confidently predict that the result of this campaign will be to ‘increase’ statelessness by many millions of people. This is not because I think that the campaign is misconceived — far from it — but because the statistics on the numbers of stateless persons are currently so inadequate that one of the main impacts of greater attention to the issue will be that currently uncounted populations will come into focus.
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3 November 2014
The Citizen
There is “something fundamentally wrong” in the way the home affairs department handles the repatriation of migrants, High Court in Pretoria Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann said on Friday.
“We have had the case of [Khalfan Khamis] Mohamed and the case of Emmanuel Tsebe, now we have the case of Edwin Samotse. Not only is it the same problem, but the failure to protect the fundamental right to life of an individual has raised its head again,” said Bertelsmann.
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31 October 2014
enCA television
Home Affairs says it’s suspended three officials over an illegal deportation scandal. The department landed in hot water after deporting a Botswana national who’s accused of murder in his home country.
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31 October 2014
South African Press Association
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) welcomed the Constitutional Court's order on Thursday that South African police investigate claims of torture against senior Zimbabwean officials.
“We are quite happy that the Constitutional Court has come out so strongly in favour of full implementation of South Africa's Rome Statute Act,” LHR co-ordinator David Cote said in a statement.
“Universal jurisdiction against the most abominable crimes is a world-wide movement and an important step against impunity.”
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