Hundreds march in KZN against illegal immigrants

KwaZulu-Natal residents are calling for stronger enforcement of immigration laws and border security to address the scourge of undocumented foreign nationals in the country.

An organisation called “March in March” led a public protest from Durban’s King Dinuzulu Park to the City Hall on Monday to call for the removal of undocumented foreigners.

Vuma FM radio personality Jacinta Ngobese, one of the organisers, told TimesLIVE the movement had started with people raising their concerns about illegal foreigners on social media.

“We (then) decided to stand up, come together and do something about it instead of just sitting and complaining behind our keyboards. We are really tired of illegal immigration, we’re tired of feeling unsafe in our country.

“We’re tired of our government not taking this seriously because they think we’re just sitting behind our phones. So we said let’s put our voices and faces together and actually do something about it.”

Ngobese said South Africans were competing for scarce resources with illegal foreigners who were enjoying services without contributing positively to the country's economy.

The movement believes illegal immigrants are behind a lot of the criminal activities in the country — including involvement in cash-in-transit robberies, illegal mining, human trafficking and illegal occupation of buildings in cities like eThekwini. But they do not see any visible progress from the government in combating this.

“Over the past few months, we woke to a realisation that one illegal immigrant is selling and renting low-cost houses that government should be allocating to the poor and downtrodden people,” said the movement in a statement.

“We are scared that due to these issues, we will wake up one day and a whole war would have erupted between South African citizens and illegal immigrants.”

Ngobese said they want to raise awareness about these issues because “our government just doesn’t get it”. They want the government to “prioritise South Africans in all sectors of society”.

“That’s what they promised us but we’re not getting that. Now we have to share everything that we have with people we don’t even know and people who are not even contributing to the economy of this country because you can’t tell me that someone who is undocumented plays a part in the economy.

“It’s making it very uncomfortable for us because we consistently feel unsafe. We have hijacked buildings, an increase in drugs, we have education departments complaining that they have a lot of children in schools who are undocumented and that creates a problem for South African children who no longer get space inside schools. It’s the same thing in hospitals.”

Among their demands is for an “urgent public discourse and/or engagement” with stakeholders for government, nonprofit organisations, religious leaders, SAPS and the legal fraternity at large” to discuss their proposals.

Those proposals include strengthening border security, deportation of illegal immigrants, and strengthening collaboration between law enforcement and NGOs.

“This would not only help curb illegal immigration but also reduce the opportunities for fraudulent activities tied to undocumented residents.”

The march was joined by other “like-minded” organisations including the Public Servants Association (PSA), Operation Dudula, Patriotic Alliance and ActionSA.

Mlungisi Ndlovu, PSA provincial manager, said state entities should be properly capacitated for these measures to succeed.

“We cannot have a country where all illegal immigrants in the continent come to. We are saying the state must be resourced and our borders must be secured, not just a fence that people can easily move across.”

He added that the removal of illegal immigrants was a collective responsibility between the government and local communities.

Phambili Sikiti, PA regional leader, said they wanted leaders to uphold the existing laws because they believe illegal foreigners were occupying spaces that should be occupied by South Africans.

“There are legal provisions that only locals are to participate in township and other micro economies. We are asking our leaders from national and provincial government and even Isilo (Zulu King) to help enforce the law because we need to win this battle.”

Zwakele Mncwango, ActionSA provincial chairperson, added: “It’s not understandable why we still have this issue when our laws are clear that an employer who employs someone who is illegal in the country is guilty of a crime; that foreign nationals need to inject a minimum of R5m to get a business licence to invest in our country. Yet there are so many spaza shops. Are they really investing that amount to get permission to operate these businesses? Or maybe our officials are overlooking these issues.”

Ngobese dismissed suggestions that the movement's actions were xenophobic.

“We’ve been getting a lot of questions about xenophobia and we are very unhappy with that because this is the same gaslighting tool that has been used for years to make us shut up and keep quiet. There is this idea that everything that South Africans do is antigovernment in the fight against illegal immigrants,” she said.

“That is what we’re fighting against, to say ‘one step at a time we are going to make sure that we have a voice and no-one is going to tell us that we are xenophobic for wanting what’s best for our country.’ If you’re illegally here, you are a criminal so you can’t tell us that fighting crime is wrong.”

Sabelo Gwala, special adviser to KwaZulu-Natal premier Thamsanqa Ntuli, accepted a memorandum from the marchers.

The movement expects a response to its demands by April 24.

TimesLIVE