Court orders deportation of 16 Mozambican women, 15 others remain in custody

The Barberton Magistrate’s Court has ordered the deportation of 16 Mozambican women who were arrested in Mpumalanga on Friday.

Police arrested a total of 41 Mozambican nationals on Friday at about 8pm at Kaapmuiden, Mpumalanga.

The arrest followed information from Crime Intelligence regarding the two taxis which were transporting undocumented people from Mozambique to Johannesburg.

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Kaapmuiden SAPS, Local Criminal Record Centre and Border Police, followed up on the information, and spotted the taxis. They stopped and searched the taxis on the N4 next to Kaapmuiden.

During the search, police found a total of 16 women travelling with 10 toddlers, and 15 men without proper documentation. Among the 16 women there were four teenage girls.

They were charged and detained on allegations of kidnapping, aiding, abetting and contravening the Immigration Act respectively.

They appeared in the Barberton Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

The 16 Mozambican women were found guilty and sentenced to R2 000 or six months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years on condition that they are not convicted for similar offences during the period of suspension.

The court further ordered that the accused be deported back to their country immediately.

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The court postponed the cases against the 15 Mozambican men to 20 August 2024 for Legal Aid representatives, said Captain Dineo Sekgotodi.

They remain in custody as investigations continue.

The court did not deal with the cases against the minors, pending the availability of a probation officer and social workers.

Mozambican boys rescued

In May, the Gauteng department of social development social workers repatriated eight Mozambican boys back home.

The police found the boys during a raid initiated by the department of labour and employment.

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This after it received information that a factory owned by a Chinese national in Nigel was employing children and undocumented foreigners.

The department placed the boys, between 13 and 17 years old, at Mary Moodley Child and Youth Care Centre in Benoni.

The department opened a case of child labour, poor working conditions and employing undocumented minors against the owner of the electrical supply company in Nigel.

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The boys arrived in South Africa on 15 January in a taxi with 14 other boys. They told the social workers at the time that a driver of the Nigel-based company had recruited them in Mozambique.

At the time, the Children’s Court in Nigel gave the department permission to release the boys from the centre to repatriate them and hand them over to their counterparts in Mozambique.

Human trafficking in South Africa

According to the 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report by the US Department of State, human trafficking for various reasons was still rife in South Africa.

This despite the South African government’s efforts in combatting human trafficking.

ALSO READ: 2024 human trafficking report reveals alarming exploitation trends in SA

According to the report, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in South Africa.

They recruit victims from neighbouring countries and South Africa’s rural areas and exploit them in sex trafficking in urban areas such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Bloemfontein.

“Despite high unemployment, migrants travel from East, Central, and Southern Africa to South Africa looking for economic opportunity and are vulnerable to exploitation,” reads the report.

SA police have made several arrests of undocumented persons and deported them.

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