Programme News
7 October 2013
(News)
Herbert Baluku spent six years of his adult life in jail and was released from a South African deportation centre only after two urgent court applications. His only “crime” was not being able to prove citizenship of any country.
His plight is but one example of the tribulations faced by over 12 million people worldwide who are forced to live their lives as stateless persons.
The...
7 October 2013
(News)
South Africa would make bigger strides in securing its population register and protecting national security if it focused its attention on preventing statelessness, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has said.
Stateless people – those who are not recognised as nationals by any country and can often not be deported because of this – form a shadow population of millions of people in South...
3 October 2013
(News)
Identity theft has once again reared its ugly head after it emerged that terror accused Samantha Lewthwaite fraudulently used a South African travel document when planning the deadly Nairobi Mall attack.
The Department of Home Affairs is due in court next week to oppose a challenge against their decision to cancel all suspected fraudulent identity documents.
Lindiwe, who does not want to give her...
27 September 2013
(News)
Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has vowed to defend in court her decision to invalidate duplicate IDs by the end of October and multiple IDs by December — a decision that is being challenged by Lawyers for Human Rights.
The human rights organisation has brought a court application to declare "unlawful and unconstitutional" efforts to block any citizen’s duplicate...
23 September 2013
(News)
Tendai Takawarasha spends his days hawking sunglasses and phone chargers to motorists at traffic lights in an affluent neighborhood of Johannesburg. For him, and many of the estimated 1.5 million mainly undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants in ...
23 September 2013
(News)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has warned that government steps to block duplicate identity numbers could lead to a potential nationality crisis.
Attorney Liesl Muller of the rights watchdog’s Statelessness Project said a blocked identity number equated to someone being deprived of nationality and denied access to basic rights while their status was investigated.
Acting Home Affairs...
13 September 2013
(News)
While the Department of Home Affairs compiles the National Population Register, rooting out duplicate or fraudulent ID documents, concerns have arisen that measures to “block” these may leave hundreds of thousands of innocent South Africans stateless.
Khadija Patel spoke to Lawyers for Human Rights about the implications.
Lampposts across the country are being readied for their...
5 August 2013
(News)
Asylum-seekers in Limpopo have accused state organs of having taken away their livelihoods. A year ago, Limpopo police closed down foreign-owned tuckshops in the townships, saying that the asylum-seekers would need to apply for business permits. But the operation was aimed specifically at Ethiopian and Somali spaza shop owners, leaving locally-owned businesses untouched. Most lost everything and...
1 August 2013
(News)
Downtown Johannesburg is no paradise. Some consider it an unfriendly and dilapidated concrete jungle. It is, however, cherished by those who cannot part with memories of better days - and those who call it home.
Thirty or so children call the Central Methodist Church in the heart of the city their home from 6.30am to 6pm every week day. They greet visitors with giddy cheers and screams, each...
30 July 2013
(News)
More than three years since it was introduced in Parliament, the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Bill has received presidential assent - paving the way for a single statute that will address human trafficking holistically and comprehensively, writes Pam Saxby for Legalbrief Policy Watch.
According to a media statement issued yesterday, once in force the Act will make...