Mashaba presents to Home Affairs parliament committee

The outgoing mayor of the City of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba told Parliament’s Home Affairs and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs committee on 22 October, that 113 properties were raided in Johannesburg and 210 undocumented migrants were arrested during the first quarter of 2018/19 until the first quarter of 2019/20.

Mashaba was presenting to the committee along with the mayor of Ekurhuleni Metro Mzwandile Masina and mayor of Polokwane Local Municipality Thembi Nkadimeng following the spate of violence which took place in September this year and claimed the lives of 12 people.

Mashaba said that the Group Forensic and Investigation Services at the City, together with the police and Joburg Metro Police Department had conducted four raids on nine different properties within the inner city, which resulted to the confiscation of counterfeit goods to the value of R40 million. Furthermore, he said that the City’s Department of Social Development, through the Migrant Sub-Unit assists undocumented migrants through a variety of programmes.

He said the current audit of the inner city has revealed that 17 per cent of patients using the municipality’s clinics were undocumented.

He added that the Department of Housing suspected that around 100 undocumented migrants reside at the temporary emergency accommodation (TEA) facilities during the night. Meanwhile, he said that 23 foreign nationals have been allocated RDP houses in Alexandra after allegedly obtaining IDs fraudulently. Mashaba added, “How are we, as a City, supposed to effectively plan and budget when we do not know who is even in our City?

“Tension is created between South Africans and foreign nationals when TEA is provided to foreign nationals while South Africans who are awaiting housing in terms of the official housing list are overlooked. Tension is created between locals and foreign nationals as they compete for limited job opportunities. Our vision for Johannesburg is to create an inclusive and prosperous city and foreign nationals who, are here lawfully, can contribute to this vision.”

Chairperson of the Home Affairs committee Thomas Bongo said it had become clearer that all spheres of government were needed to cooperate to deal with the impact of undocumented foreign nationals on service delivery and social cohesion. “Following the violence that we saw taking place in municipalities, the South African Local Government Association (Salga) can facilitate engagement with other spheres of government to ensure that the plight of poor and smaller municipalities is not overshadowed by events in the large metros,” said Bongo.

Bongo said that committees have urged the Department of Home Affairs to continue with its law enforcement operations which saw it conduct 56 raids between July and September which saw 11 455 undocumented foreigners deported. “All this work will amount to little if the Border Management Authority (BMA) is not implemented to secure our borders. The BMA is going to consolidate all the seven departments operating in the border posts and borderlines. It will also simplify the 58 pieces of legislation which are applicable in our borders.”

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