![]() Sosa, 36, from Malawi, hesitated to take her daughter to the public clinic where they are usually treated, because all of her immigration documents had been destroyed. Twenty-two-month-old Happiness Mwanyali was badly burned along her right thigh as her mother, Mary Sosa, carried her on her back to escape the building. Several people injured in the fire hesitated to seek medical treatment, fearing contact with the authorities. Officials have restricted some pathways to legal residence, moved to limit job opportunities for immigrants and ordered more aggressive measures to round up those who may be residing in the country illegally.Ī provincial health official was captured on video last year berating a Zimbabwean woman at a hospital, accusing her of contributing to overwhelming the country’s health system. But in recent years, anti-immigrant sentiment has manifested itself in government policy and rhetoric. Much of the attention on xenophobia in South Africa has focused on occasional violent outbursts against foreign-born residents. ![]() News outlets reported that officers sometimes asked people to say words in local languages to test whether they were South African.īrigadier Brenda Muridili, a spokeswoman for the South African Police Service in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg, said the department took “any allegation of corruption seriously.” Police officials have received complaints of officers extorting foreign nationals, she said, but the challenge is that accusers often do not want to cooperate with police investigations. If they could not produce them, they were thrown into police vans and taken to jail. For several weeks, police officers, accompanied by Home Affairs officials, patrolled the streets, grabbing men at outdoor markets and other public venues, demanding to see their papers. In response, the law enforcement authorities launched broad immigration sweeps through the township. In Diepsloot, a township north of Johannesburg, South African residents blamed a spate of violent crime last year on foreign nationals, and a Zimbabwean man was burned to death by an enraged mob. Violence is another ever-present threat to migrants. Though courts have rejected the practice of indiscriminately stopping people suspected of being in the country illegally, immigrants say that police officers regularly demand documentation from them on the streets. Immigration enforcement has become a routine part of policing in South Africa. ![]() For now, though, the shelter is the safest place for undocumented immigrants, she said. But Johannesburg city officials said they were there only to help with missing documents, for both immigrants and citizens, not to deport people.Ĭolleen Makhubele, the speaker of the Johannesburg City Council, said the city was focused on addressing the immediate humanitarian crisis and was not seeking documentation from immigrants affected by the fire.īut, “we can’t suspend the law forever,” she said in an interview, suggesting that survivors who want proper documentation seek government help in getting it - even if that means returning to their native countries and applying for visas from there. Yet after arriving, immigrants find themselves living a precarious existence, violently attacked at times and blamed for intractable problems like crime, joblessness and a housing crisis.Īfter the tragedy, officials with the Department of Home Affairs, which enforces immigration laws, were quick to show up at emergency shelters, as many of the survivors feared. Kumbasa, 29, said he got out with money his wife borrowed from a Malawian acquaintance.Īs South Africans furiously debate the decades of failed government policy, overlooked warnings and ineffective leadership that led a derelict building occupied by hundreds of squatters to go up in flames last week, immigrants again find themselves in the cross hairs and feeling more vulnerable, even as they carry the heaviest trauma from the blaze.Īs one of Africa’s economic powerhouses, South Africa has long been a magnet for migrants from desperately poor countries throughout the continent’s southern region. Kumbasa said.Īfter spending three nights in a downtown police station, Mr. Accusing him of being in South Africa illegally, they locked him up and demanded at least 1,500 rand, or $78, about what he paid in rent each month, for his release, Mr. He’d lost just about everything in the fire, but the officers were unmoved when he tried to explain that his passport was destroyed. ![]() Two days after escaping a roaring blaze by slithering down a curtain with his 15-month-old daughter strapped to his chest, and hours after burying two fellow Malawians who didn’t survive, Yasini Kumbasa was stopped in downtown Johannesburg by police officers demanding to see his passport.
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