Crime crackdown in S. Africa panics immigrants

Police have used force to handle some immigrants waiting to get inside the jammed immigration office in Johannesburg

March 29, 2000
Web posted at: 7:12 p.m. EST (0012 GMT)

From Johannesburg Bureau Chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- A weeklong police crackdown on crime has sent waves of fear through Johannesburg's Hillbrow area, a suburb heavily populated by both illegal and legal immigrants.

Lines at South Africa's immigration office have swelled to unmanageable proportions with immigrants trying to renew documents that are about to expire. Police have used tear gas to control crowds trying to get into a building that will hold no more people.

Many of those caught up in the police dragnet came to South Africa to escape war in countries like Angola, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many were fleeing poverty, brought by war or countless other factors. Since apartheid, many immigrants have found their way south, hoping the new democracy could mean a new beginning for them.

Trying to gain access to the immigration office is hard enough, immigrants say, but some say the problems continue once they get inside.

Human rights workers who have written letters vouching for many of the immigrants have charged officials inside with incompetence.

"I don't think there's a proper system in place," said Sally Sealey of the Human Rights Committee.

Immigrants, holding their personal documents in the air, fight their way through overcrowded lines to reach the immigration office in Johannesburg

Crime and corruption

It may go deeper than incompetence -- some immigrants say corrupt officials ask for money to renew their permits.

Officials acknowledge that the fear engendered by the police raids has overburdened their offices, but several requests by CNN to respond to the charges went unanswered.

The raids in Hillbrow increased the number of potential deportees being held in the Landela Detention Center from 1,000 to around 3,000. Tensions are rising, with fights breaking out and outbreaks of influenza and other illnesses.

Officials who run the facility said it was too dangerous to allow a CNN crew inside.

Off-camera, they said, the reason for the danger is that many of those set for deportation are drug dealers who don't want their faces shown. That supports police charges that many of the immigrants being rounded up are involved in criminal activity.

But many of the immigrants say the real crime is poverty.

"No job, rain, no food. There is suffering," said a man from Mozambique, a nation just ravaged by torrential flooding.

He and several others have been given a one-way ticket back to Mozambique. But they said that as long as there is poverty and misery in their own country, they'll be back to South Africa again and again.

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The Human Rights Committee of South Africa
Government of South Africa
Parliament of South Africa
In depth: South Africa Elections 1999

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