South Africa can’t go back to apartheid ways

Quite correctly, legal and constitutional experts, as well as civil society activists in the US, are voicing their concern that President Donald Trump is moving towards an authoritarian state, following his deployment of soldiers from the National Guard to help quell protests in Los Angeles.

The Angelenos took to the street in reaction to heavy-handed raids on immigrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Today, on our pages, Claudia Pizzocri – CEO of a local firm specialising in immigration and citizenship – warns the same thing is already happening in South Africa under the “Operation New Broom” campaign by the Department of Home Affairs.

She says that, barely two days after the campaign launched late last month, more than 50 individuals, including children, pregnant women and asylum seekers, were rounded up during an early-morning raid at the Plastic View informal settlement in Tshwane.

The people were treated in a dehumanising manner, reminiscent of the apartheid-era crackdowns on dissent.

ALSO READ: Home Affairs launches Operation New Broom to tackle illegal immigration

At the same time, lawyers suing the anti-immigrant movement, Operation Dudula, claim their actions against alleged illegal immigrants are not only unlawful, but they get tacit support from the police and authorities.

Immigration is one of the hottest global topics at the moment as hordes of people seek to move across the world – either avoiding persecution or merely looking for a better life.

Included in this group are South African whites who are being offered asylum in the US because they are allegedly facing a genocide.

In this country – and many others – the newcomers are regarded as “The Other” and as subhuman, which makes them all that easier to abuse and deprive of their basic human rights.

In a country whose democracy rose out of the ashes of oppression, we cannot allow a similar culture of brutality to take root again.

NOW READ: NGOs say foreigners in SA told to return to their countries when opening cases against Operation Dudula