SAPS obligated to maintain law and order at upcoming PAC and EFF protests in Brackenfell

The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on the South African Police Service (SAPS) to monitor the planned protests of the PAC to the Brackenfell train station tomorrow and the EFF to Brackenfell High School on Friday closely as dangerous rhetoric regarding these protests already seems the order of the day for both these parties.

The EFF, on its official twitter account, stated that “[on] Friday we will descend and ensure that nothing operates”. This is a clear threat to intimidate and destabilise.

While the EFF is well-versed in incitement to violence, as seen with their Clicks protests and in Senekal earlier this year, the PAC has now also joined the band-wagon by making their protest slogan #OneSettlerOneBullet – a clear indication to their members to take up arms.

The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele, must ensure that the SAPS investigate both the PAC and the EFF for possible incitement to violence and intimidation in the run-up to their planned protest action. The police has a responsibility to maintain law and order and to protect all learners’ right to a peaceful education.

The Brackenfell police must maintain order and ensure that these protests do not descend into chaos and violence, despite what will surely be the best efforts of the PAC and EFF.

As seen with previous protests, the EFF has no qualms to intimidate and harass people, sometimes going as far as harming them, and destroying property in an effort to remain relevant in a country where the Covid-19 lockdown has shown them for the headline-seeking one-trick ponies they are. Without their race baiting and violent protests, the EFF has no political play.

The PAC would do well to take heed and not buy into the perpetuation of race baiting in an effort to buy relevance. Bigotry and racism as a means to scoring political points in the hopes of garnering votes, is a dangerous road with no happy end in sight.

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DA to lay complaint against EFF’s Nazier Paulsen at SAHRC

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will lay a complaint at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) against EFF Member of Parliament Nazier Paulsen over offensive remarks he recently made on social media against members of the Coloured community. (See examples here, here and here.)

These vile remarks he made were derogatory and dehumanizing and it is astounding that Paulsen even went so far as to try and defend his deplorable remarks in a Facebook post.

The DA finds it incredibly ironic that the EFF paints itself as the slayers of racism, protesting left, right and centre whenever an opportunity for posturing presents itself, but fails to address the racism at its own core. Paulsen is nothing if not a hypocrite, feeling comfortable calling a whole group of people “brown pets” and “monkey face” and then vandalizing and destroying property, intimidating workers and inciting violence when the alleged racism comes from outside the EFF.

It would not be the first time that the DA has taken a firm stance against Paulsen. Earlier this year we opened a case against Paulsen and EFF leader Julius Malema for incitement to violence, and yesterday a complaint was lodged with Parliament’s Ethics Committee for the offensive remarks on social media.

The DA trusts that the SAHRC takes the investigation of Paulsen’s posts in as serious a light as it did the investigation of the racist Clicks ad. There can be no distinction or favour regarding the investigation of racism and bigotry and the serious damage it does to the fabric of our society.

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Matric exam leak: DA calls on Motshekga to make Ministerial Statement in Parlaiment 

The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, to make a Ministerial Statement at the next sitting of the National Assembly to provide feedback on the scale of the leak of a Mathematics Matric exam paper in Limpopo and Gauteng, as well as the latest updates on the investigations into the matter.

This leak will cast a massive cloud over the integrity of the exam process and both learners and parents need assurances that the examinations will be beyond reproach, and that no further exam papers will be leaked going forward.

The DA is pleased by the Department’s quick response in initiating an investigation in trying to get to the bottom of this leak.

In a statement, the department indicated that “Matric learners in Limpopo and Gauteng appear to have seen the paper prior to being taken this morning“. The Minister should also needs to provide feedback on the action that will be taken against implicated learners.

We urge Minister Motshekga to heed to our call for a Ministerial Statement in Parliament to ensure the integrity of the exams and for peace of mind for all Matrics and their parents.

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DA questions veracity of SAPS’ stats on farm murders

The Democratic Alliance (DA) questions the veracity of the quarterly statistics on farm attacks and murders put out by the South African Police Service (SAPS) on Thursday. We are of the view that these statistics are severely underreported. Particularly related to the increase in farm murders of 62.5%.

Over the past number of months, the DA has been received numerous reports from farming communities across the country who have been turned away from SAPS stations and refused the right to open a case.

We have watched as farm attacks have been downplayed year after year, deliberately so we believe, as a logical follow-up of the SAPS removing reportage on farm attacks and murders from their official crime statistics releases for many years. We therefore believe that the percentages, particularly related to farm murders and attacks should be much higher than reported.

In KwaZulu-Natal, for example, we received reports of farm residents being turned away from a SAPS station when they attempted to open a case in relation to a farm attack. The farm manager was attacked and severely beaten up, left in a pool of blood, managed to escape and is in hospital. The SAPS from Donnybrook allegedly told the residents they cannot open a case until the farm manager recovers and lays the charges himself.

We have report after report of no CAS number being sent to persons in rural areas who have opened a case, which means what? That the police doesn’t believe there is a case? That there is no investigation taking place?
We also have reports from our Provincial Heads of the DA Rural Safety Workstream, with Gauteng seeming to be a particular problem in terms of under-reporting these farm attacks.

It is ridiculous that the SAPS would apparently attempt to distort the truth of farm attacks and murders and other farm-related crimes, whilst at the same time delaying justice for the victims.

Instead of investigating these crimes, the police seek to ignore them. Stock theft is through the roof, and stock theft syndicates are quite possibly behind many of the attacks, yet the Minister of Police has not called for a mass investigation into the syndicates, but for an audit of the sheep and cattle.

It is exactly due to this dithering on the part of the Minister and his department that the DA launched our Court Watching Briefs Units across all nine provinces to ensure that cases are being follow up on and that these cases see the inside of a courtroom.

We call on the SAPS to do their jobs at the same level in our rural areas, as they do in our urban areas. To declare clearly and unequivocally that these Rural Attacks will be declared to be Priority Crimes, as are the Cash in Transit heists. The rural stations need the additional staffing and equipment that title of Priority Crime brings with it. We cannot go on behaving as if our farming communities mean less to South African than a truck full of cash.

Our Agricultural sector is a Strategic Asset and must be protected. Turning away family members, or colleagues who attempt to open a case at their local SAPS is unconscionable.

A raft of questions will go to the Minister of Police today, and we have asked that every such incident be reported to us. We will be asking if an instruction has gone out to downplay these attacks.

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Minister Motsoaledi set to appear before Parliament over Bushiris – following DA‘s call for accountability

The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the decision by the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee in Home Affairs, Bongani Bongo, inviting Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, to account to Parliament over fugitives, Shepherd Bushiri, and his wife, Mary, who recently skipped the country while out on bail.

The DA yesterday called on the the Minister to appear before Parliament, to not only answer for Bushiri-gate but also to account for his Department’s abject failure to effectively manage South Africa’s ports of entry and departure.

In addition to the session in Parliament tomorrow, we also urge President Cyril Ramaphosa to engage his Malawian counterpart, President Lazarus Chakwera, on this incident to ensure effective cooperation between the two nations in the extradition process.

There has been numerous unsubstantiated rumors and allegations that the Bushiris may have fled to their home country on board the Malawian president’s aircraft. And while both Pretoria and Lilongwe have denied these allegations, we urge President Ramaphosa to commission an investigation to test these allegations.

The Bushiris’ escape has laid bare the inefficiencies within our border management system which resulted in wanted fugitives passing through them with ease and without detection. This was not only an indictment on Home Affairs but also on our law enforcement agencies.

This is of course not the first time that fugitives have fled our country under the cover of “diplomatic immunity”. In 2015, Omar al Bashar, managed to skip the country, despite facing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. And in 2017, the then Zimbabwean First Lady, Grace Mugabe, fled South Africa despite facing criminal charges over allegedly assaulting a model in a Johannesburg-hotel.

Home Affairs and all the relevant departments such as International Relations, State Security, Police and the Department of Defence need to urgently come together to address the challenges facing our border management processes.

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DA requests Military Ombud to investigate SANDF Covid-19 drugs debacle

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will write to the Military Ombud, Lt Gen (Ret) Vusumuzi Masondo, to request an investigation into the debacle around the R215 million the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) wasted on importing Heberon Alpha R 2B, also known as Interferon, to use as Covid-19 treatment even though it is not registered for use in that capacity by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA).

Recently a scathing preliminary report from the Auditor-General (AG) of South Africa painted a dark picture of the procurement of these drugs. Not only did the Department of Defence (DoD) not provide the AG with the necessary information to complete the investigation, it seems that the Department did not comply with legislation regarding the importing of non-registered pharmaceuticals before, during or after the fact. The Department also seemingly failed to follow the proper protocols related to monitoring the cold chain storage and transportation of the imported drugs, and there are serious concerns around the integrity, and subsequent usability, of a large number of the imported vials that have yet to be addressed.

An answer as to why DoD felt the need to import medication in the first place and sought to remove this responsibility from the Health Department has yet to be answered as well.

As highlighted in a Sunday Times article, the report noted that SANDF had permission for the treatment of one patient with 10 vials of the imported Heberon Alpha R 2B, but that SAHPRA rejected the application for treatment on a large scale.

Questions around who approved the procurement of the medication will hopefully be answered when SANDF complies with the AG requests to be furnished with the necessary documentation to complete the investigation.

In the mean-time, the DA will be laying charges with the Military Ombud against the SANDF Chief Gen Solly Shoke, SANDF Chief of Logistics Lt Gen Morris Moadira, SANDF Chief of Staff Lt Gen Lindile Yam, and the Surgeon General of the South African Military Health Service (SAMHS) Lt Gen Zola Dabula. The DA also calls for President Cyril Ramaphosa to hold the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to account for her involvement in this latest scandal to rock the DoD this year.

The AG report shows a corrupt SANDF that tried every trick in the book to get away with wasting taxpayers’ money on illegally importing non-registered pharmaceuticals. SANDF did not even show prospective patients the courtesy of ensuring that the medication was transported in a safe manner and strived to use military personnel and soldiers as unwitting lab rats by seeking permission from SAHPRA to use the drug on a large scale months after it reached South African soil.

From the start, the procurement of these pharmaceuticals from Cuba involved nothing but subterfuge and illegalities and those responsible need to be brought to book urgently.

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DA urges ethics committee to urgently probe EFF’s Paulsen over offensive Facebook posts about Coloured community 

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has laid a complaint against the EFF Member of Parliament, Nazier Paulsen with Parliament’s Ethics Committee, following a series of very offensive and derogatory posts about the Coloured community on his social media.

The DA condemns in the strongest terms the comments made by Paulsen via his Facebook page, where he refers to Coloured people as “brown pets” and “monkey face.” (see here , here, here, and here)

We call on the Ethics Committee to meet urgently in order to deliberate on his offensive remarks as we cannot allow a situation where Members of Parliament openly use derogatory and offensive language against an entire community and get away with it.

These utterances are not only dehumanizing, derogatory, and offensive to the Coloured community, but it also goes against the ethical values and standards of behaviour that public representatives are expected to uphold.

The DA now urges the Ethics Committee to urgently expedite a probe into Paulsen’s conduct, as this is not the first time we have laid a complaint of this nature against him.

The DA has also previously referred both Paulsen and EFF leader, Julius Malema, to the Ethics committee over social media post seemingly inciting violence.

South Africa’s moral fibre has slipped down a very poisonous and gruesome path, Parliament cannot continue to allow its members to behave in this manner. Doing so sends a wrong message to people of South Africa and diminishes the standards and the values of public office.

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The DA’s by-election setback: An analysis

What Lessons can the DA Learn from the By-Elections of Wednesday 11 November 2020.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, after being up most of the night watching the results of Wednesday’s by-elections trickle in, I wrote a Facebook post that elicited wide-ranging and intense responses. 

The post was my back-of-the-envelope analysis of the results, and their implications. 

Now that I have the benefit of concentrated number-crunching, on a ward-by-ward basis, (thanks to Johan van der Berg and Gareth van Onselen) I am able to do a much deeper analysis of the election outcome, as honestly as possible.

I will reflect first on some general insights, before getting into the specifics of particular wards, and conclude with some lessons from the DA’s own history.

The first general point, is this:  Institutions, including political parties, are very difficult to build and frighteningly easy to break.

A series of expedient decisions, a few compounded mis-judgements, combined with vacillating leadership, can undo the work of decades.  Reconstruction usually takes years, where it is possible at all. 

In politics, where triumphs and disasters often follow each other in quick succession, longer term trends are difficult to discern, especially in the cacophony of superficial media “analysis”.

It is therefore essential, after last week’s disappointing by-elections, to filter the important signals from the background noise.  That is what I try to do here, based on the statistical evidence.

The facts are as follows:  The ANC had a much worse day at the polls than the DA, (although no-one who read newspapers or followed broadcast news would know this).

Judged by comparative party performances in all the 44 by-elections where the DA, the ANC and the EFF fielded candidates, the ANC lost 7,8 percentage points in support since the last national election (2019).  In comparison the DA lost 0,8% and the EFF grew very slightly by 0,3%.

Read superficially, those statistics tell us that the DA is stabilising, after our catastrophic “free fall years” between 2016 and 2019.   And the deeper we burrow into the statistics, the better the news tends to get. 

On average, our support grew significantly among both black and white voters.  Where we saw a sharp drop  —  in the wards where there is a majority of voters that the apartheid regime would have classified as “coloured” or Indian —  the by-elections took place under the most difficult local circumstances imaginable.  The results in ward by-elections must always be understood within a specific local context. 

However, that is no reason for complacency and we dare not ignore the broader trends.

Despite the fact that the comparative numbers tell us a relatively positive story, we must still ask this core question:  If these statistics are correct (which they are) how is it possible that the DA suffered a loss of nine seats, and a gain of only two  —  a net loss of seven?  Of the seats lost, five were to the ANC, one to GOOD, one to the Freedom Front Plus, one to Al Jama’ah and one to the Patriotic Alliance. 

The DA’s gains were:  one ward in the Eastern Cape from the ANC, and one from an independent candidate in the Free state.  We also retained 14 wards, some with increased majorities.                                                           

On the face of these numbers it seems absurd to say that the ANC lost more than the DA.  But it is true.

Let us look at the overall trends:

  • The biggest winners in these by-elections were the small ethnic parties. 
  • DA’s losses to these parties were ward 9 in Lenasia (which we lost to Al Jama’ah), ward 68 in Riverlea Johannesburg (which we lost to Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Allaince), Ward 27 in George (which we lost to GOOD), and Ward 5 in Potchefstroom to the FF+.
  • Despite these wins, smaller parties are rarely able to win wards.  They tend to draw voters away from the DA, thereby usually enabling the ANC to win, accounting for some of the ANC’s apparent gains.   This happened in Ward 120 Johannesburg (Lenasia South); Phokwane and Renosterberg in the Northern Cape. 
  • In yet other places, where there have been significant demographic shifts, due to the mushrooming of informal settlements in the area.  Among the wards lost to this trend was Ward 29 Madibeng, Ward 120 Johannesburg and Ward 16 Emfuleni.

But, the greatest warning sign, overall, was the percentage drop in coloured support in the “rural” Western Cape wards we contested, specifically in George and Saldanha.  This, I believe, is in large measure the result of the DA’s extremely clumsy and, frankly incomprehensible treatment of Patricia de Lille, as the party sought to expel her in 2018, contributing significantly to the “Free-Fall” years between 2016 and 2019.

Added to this were local factors in the wards that resulted in the expulsion or resignation of DA councillors, giving rise to the vacancies and necessitated by-elections. 

Take the four George Wards:  Ward 27 (which we lost to GOOD) and three in which we had severely reduced majorities (Wards 8, 14, and 17).  Those vacancies arose as a result of the fact that the DA expelled its former corrupt mayor, and his coterie of close councillors.  Instead of being rewarded for being the only party that holds its leaders accountable, we faced the backlash from local communities.  GOOD saw the opportunity, and was there waiting to establish a beach-head in the Southern Cape.  That’s how local politics works. 

In a strange way, however, the wake-up call of last week was a positive thing.  It gives us a closer insight into the damage we have suffered since 2016, largely self-inflicted.  That damage has been primarily political, but when the politics go wrong, the organisational infrastructure is quick to follow.  It is impossible to fix organisationally what is broken politically. 

This is why our Policy Conference, our Federal Congress and our Provincial Congresses were all such important markers on our road to recovery. 

No more “blue wobbly jelly” trying to be all things to all people, as John Steenhuisen said.  No more judging people on the basis of their race before we bother to get the facts  —  as we did in the debacles involving Elana Barkhuizen in Schweizer Reneke and Ashwin Willemse, the erstwhile Supersport rugby commentator.  The DA’s knee-jerk response on both these (and other) issues cost us dearly.

As we begin our recovery, we can also learn some important lessons from our own history. 

The clearest historical comparison starts with the political triumph of the 1999 general election, when the then Democratic Party became the official opposition.  After decades of struggle against the once formidable National Party, we had finally overtaken them in the polls.

We then moved quickly to absorb what was left of our erstwhile arch-opponent the NNP, and changed our name to the Democratic Alliance.  Despite consistent media criticism, we continued to soar in the polls and achieved another high in the local elections of 2000 when we won an overall majority in Cape Town of 53%  —  and 23% nationwide.  Our growth had been nothing short of spectacular.

Just one short year later, our dream of building a formidable alternative to the ANC lay in tatters.  We had bitten off more than we could chew.

Internal ideological incompatibility eventually blew the DA apart.  Marthinus van Schalkwyk led his New National Party into the ANC, and the DA’s electoral fortunes faced a dramatic reversal.

In Cape Town, our voter support was slashed by almost a half.  Where we had drawn 53% in 2000, we retained only 27% in the election four years later.

Thus began the long, slow recovery, which took a full decade.

It was only in 2011  —  when we won 61% of the vote in Cape Town and 24% nationwide  —  that we again achieved the electoral heights we had scaled ten years earlier.

We were on a roll again, entering a growth spurt that led to the triumph of the 2016 election when we managed to become the core of new governments in four metros outside the Western Cape, and govern 32 municipalities overall, some outright, others in coalitions.

And, just as so often happens in politics, we were at our most vulnerable at our time of greatest success.  The quest for sustained rapid growth led us not only to bite off more than we could chew, yet again.  Even worse, it encouraged us to take ideological short-cuts in an attempt to win the “race against time” to save South Africa from its threatened demise under the ANC’s “criminal state”.

In the process of seeking new votes, we departed from our core values, vacillated on key issues of principle, and broke trust with many of our loyal voters, without gaining any significant new support.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Voters of all races, who had backed us because they identified with our values, which offered a viable alternative to the ANC, left in droves.

Just as happened after our complex, and ultimately ill-fated marriage with the NNP of 2000, we have to strip away the ideologically incoherence that arose during the past five years, and consolidate once more around our core values before embarking on the long, hard road of recovery. 

One thing I have learnt (yet again) is that there are no short-cuts to building a non-racial, principled alternative to the ANC.  It is the “politics of the long haul” or the “long obedience” as two former party leaders described it.

One of the biggest problems a political party faces during a period of rapid growth, is that superficial success disguises deep-seated problems and makes them easier to ignore.  Hubris leads to poor decisions and attempted short-cuts. This is exacerbated by shallow analysis, especially in the media, whose proposed “solutions” often only serve to aggravate the underlying cause of the malaise.

It takes a real jolt to face the facts: the result of the 2019 election, the Review Committee report later that year, and these by-elections last week have all played their role.

The great risk is learning the wrong lessons from a traumatic experience.  We must ignore the media, interpret the statistics accurately, understand the forces at work, and start the long road to recovery.  As Helen Suzman always told us:  When in doubt, revert to our principles.

These, in my opinion, are some of the crucial lessons as we go into the 2021 local government elections:

When we enter governing coalitions, we must be confident that we will be able to govern properly.  We must have candidates, especially mayoral candidates, of the right calibre.  We need clear coalition agreements, that are enforceable.

Above all, we should never again enter minority coalition governments in which we are dependent on our arch-opponents, the EFF, to stay in power.  The fact that we did this led to the failure of our coalition governments in Tshwane and Johannesburg, severely damaging our “good governance” brand.   Our losses in minority communities in Gauteng can be traced back directly to our failures in government in Johannesburg that arose from trying to keep the EFF “sweet” so that we could stay in power.  Walking the streets of Lenasia before the by-election I heard it first hand:  voters regarded it as betrayal.

The DA’s voters, of all races, demand high standards of the party:  Our voters are tough on us when they perceive internal conflict, weak governance, inconsistency and lack of focus on their issues.  They punish us at the polls.  This is something we should welcome.  It is a sign of democratic maturity and we must learn the lessons accordingly.

We have made a good start on our recovery, as (ironically) our election results show, based on the recent Policy Conference (where we reaffirmed our core values and commitment to non-racialism) and our seamless Federal Elective Congress where we elected new leadership.

But we must be under no illusions  —  recovery this time around could be even harder than it was in 2000.  Back then our core values (especially non-racialism) were considered progressive.  Today there has been an international shift to identity politics, resulting in the absurdity that non-racialism is even described as “racist”.  Identity politics are a very attractive proposition in minority communities nurturing grievances world-wide.  The retreat to ethnic identity is in full swing and will be difficult to counter.  But we have to be clear:  there is really no alternative, if we want a peaceful prosperous South Africa, than to build a large, inclusive moderate centrist party, in which individuals protect each other’s rights while claiming their own.  We were making good progress, and we have to get back there.  Recovery is not only possible.  It is essential.

As Winston Churchill said:  Success is never final.  Failure is rarely fatal.  It’s the courage to continue that counts.

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81 Esidimeni claimants still not paid out

Only R6.5 million (5%) of the R120 million budget for compensation to Life Esidimeni victims and their families has been paid out so far this year, and 81 verified claimants have not been paid at all.

This was revealed last week on Thursday in a presentation by the Premier’s Office at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Oversight Committee on the Premier’s Office and Legislature (OCPOL).

According to the Premier’s Office, the underspending is due to lockdown restrictions which resulted in delays in the verification process of claimants.

There were 451 claims received, of which 352 were verified, but 81 of these claimants have still not been paid.

Gauteng Director-General Phindile Baleni says that the remainder of the R120 million budget will be spent in December and January when the trust is set up by the Master of the Court for the 50% of the payout that is earmarked for the patients. The other 50% is supposed to go to the families of the patients.

A complicating factor is that aggrieved family members are going to court next week to ensure that their own lawyers administer the trust as they mistrust the lawyers that the provincial government will appoint.

It’s a sad situation that there are still unresolved compensation issues in this tragic matter in which so many people suffered because of government neglect.

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Motsoaledi must account for Bushiri’s escape

The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes with concern reports that the controversial self-proclaimed prophet Shepherd Bushiri and his wife, Mary, managed to flee South Africa while expected to stand trial for allegations of fraud, theft, and money laundering to the value of R102 million. Bushiri and his wife were arrested in October and were each granted bail of R200 000 earlier this month on condition that they would remain in the country to appear in court.

According to reports the pair allegedly fled South Africa for Malawi, crossing the border illegally after bribing Home Affairs officials. This is a serious indictment on the role of Home Affairs and border control to effectively police South Africa’s ports of entry and secure the movement of individuals to and from our country.

More worryingly, Bushiri’s escape brings into question the security and safety of our nation given how easily border management systems can be manipulated by corruption and bribery, especially in light of reports of insurgents led by religious extremists in neighbouring countries such as Mozambique.

The DA calls on The Minister of Home Affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, to appear before Parliament to account for his Department’s abject failure to effectively manage South Africa’s ports of entry and departure, which have rendered our borders so porous that even wanted fugitives can pass through them with ease. The Minister must tell South Africa how:

  • Bushiri was granted South African citizenship; and
  • How the pair escaped the country without passports considering that their documents were supposedly handed over to the NPA when they were granted bail.

The fact that two individuals wanted for grave crimes have managed to flee our country so effortlessly is a slap in the face to the millions of South African citizens deserving of swift justice for this crime. There is evidently nothing stopping criminals from evading justice in South Africa by border-hopping when Home Affairs has no control over who enters and leaves our country.

The ANC-led national government must urgently begin the process to extradite Bushiri to South Africa. Bushiri is now a fugitive on the run, and government cannot allow porous borders and corruption within border management to deny citizens justice in this matter.

As the DA, we remain committed not only to ensuring that our borders are tight and that South Africa is safe, but bringing to book those who have committed grave acts of crime in our country no matter where in the world they may have fled. South Africa deserves justice and the DA demands this of government in the interests of our citizens and their safety.

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