antimigrant

June 30 (UPI) — Security forces across South Africa were braced Tuesday for demonstrations coinciding with anti-immigrant and vigilante groups’ self-declared deadline for undocumented migrants to leave the country, amid fears that the protests could turn violent.

Tuesday’s events follow weeks of rallies that have been blamed for inciting violence against migrants in the country, both illegally and legally, by people who believe they are taking jobs from South Africans, carrying out criminal offenses and overburdening schools, hospitals and other essential services.

March and March, one of the anti-migrant organizations, had used the threat of the protests to try to force the “immediate massive deportation of all illegal foreigners currently in the country” by June 30.

However, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s direct appeals for cool heads and for demonstrators not to engage in “intimidation, threats or ultimatums” appeared to have been heard with the Police Ministry reporting that, apart from some looting, the protests went off mostly without incident.

In Johannesburg, five people were arrested for allegedly looting a foreign-owned store in Soweto township while windows of apartments in Yeoville, home to many migrants from other African countries, were smashed by brick-hurling protesters, police said.

Five people were also arrested in Hammarsdale in KwaZulu-Natal province after they allegedly broke into a shop there.

Ramaphosa met leaders of the protests on Monday, ordering them not to resort to violence while acknowledging that the immigration system needed fixing.

“Some foreign nationals who live in South Africa are here lawfully. They work, study, raise families, invest in our economy and contribute positively to our society. They too are entitled to the protection of our laws and our Constitution. The right to protest and freedom of expression does not allow people to threaten or intimidate others, or to engage in acts of vandalism or violence,” he wrote in his weekly blog.

Ramaphosa’s intervention came too late for many immigrants, frightened into leaving by the violence and anti-migrant sentiment in the country.

At least three foreign nationals have been killed in violent attacks in the past month: two Mozambicans when a mob razed a shanty settlement in the Western Cape and a Malawian man at another encampment near Durban during a march against undocumented immigrants that forced hundreds of migrants to flee to the safety of churches and mosques.

Nigeria evacuated 269 of its citizens on Monday — taking the number it has flown home to date to about 600 — with more flights planned over the next few days.

Gardener Kauga Nyirenda told CNN two men turned up at his home threatening to kill him if he didn’t go back to his native Malawi.

“They asked me: ‘When are you going to leave the country? We want to fix our country. If you don’t leave now, you’re going to leave in a coffin because we don’t need anyone after 30th of June,'” said Nyirenda.

In the run-up to Tuesday, about 25,000 others have been sent back to their home countries, mostly elsewhere in Africa, with about 50,000 people detained as illegal migrants since January, according to government agencies, with many of those in temporary camps for their own safety, pending repatriation processing.

Malawi has repatriated about 7,000 of its citizens. Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have also been laying on air and road repatriation transport for their nationals.

Official figures show there are at least three million documented foreign nationals in South Africa.

Police and personnel from private security firms have been deployed across South Africa because of fears that anti-immigration protests could turn violent as President Cyril Ramaphosa urged those planning to take part to do so without “intimidation, threats or ultimatums”.

The planned protests mark an unofficial deadline set by campaigners for all undocumented foreigner to leave the country.

Many have already fled to escape violence and intimidation. South African police say 25,000 have been repatriated so far. Most are from other African countries.

One undocumented Malawian told the BBC he was “happy to be going back” but “heartbroken” to be leaving behind four young children.

Johannesburg, where one of the protests is planned, is unusually quiet.

All the shops in the vicinity of where marchers are due to gather are closed, while police visibility is high on the city’s major streets.

Police said that five people were arrested in Johannesburg’s biggest township, Soweto, for allegedly looting a foreign-owned shop.

Five people were also arrested for allegedly breaking into a tuck shop in Hammarsdale in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Many businesses in central Durban, the main city in the province, are shut.

Ramaphosa has repeatedly warned demonstrators to act peacefully and responsibly, while also accepting the need for immigration reforms.

“Some foreign nationals who live in South Africa are here lawfully,” he reminded citizens in his weekly newsletter, external.

“They work, study, raise families, invest in our economy and contribute positively to our society. They too are entitled to the protection of our laws and our Constitution.

“The right to protest and freedom of expression does not allow people to threaten or intimidate others, or to engage in acts of vandalism or violence,” he wrote.

There are more than three million documented foreign nationals in South Africa, according to official figures.

Ahead of the deadline, thousands of migrants have been awaiting processing in temporary camps for several weeks out of fear for their safety.

A bitter battle that exposed deep divisions over the direction of America’s conservation movement reached culmination with the announcement Wednesday that Sierra Club members had overwhelmingly rejected a campaign by immigration control advocates to control the venerable environmental group.

In what was termed the largest voter turnout in the Sierra Club’s 112-year history, more than 22% of the group’s 757,000 members cast ballots to select its governing board. The votes, which were submitted by members in March and April, were tallied Wednesday. The members elected a slate backed by the club’s leaders and which received more than 110,000 votes apiece.

By contrast, a slate of candidates seeking to bring a strong immigration control agenda to the club garnered only minimal support — former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, the best known, received 13,090 votes.

“I never argue with the voters. My congratulations to the winners,” Lamm said in an e-mail shortly after the results were announced. He declined to be interviewed.

Five seats were up for grabs on the club’s 15-member governing board. The election took place via mail and the Internet starting in March.

The election was the second time in less than a decade that the Sierra Club, arguably the nation’s most influential environmental group, has publicly wrestled with the issue of restricting immigration. Members voted to remain neutral on the issue in 1998, following a campaign that featured accusations that conservationists were resorting to immigrant bashing, and counterclaims that political correctness was leading to environmental cowardice. The same accusations were raised this year.

Despite the 1998 vote, an increasingly vocal group of environmentalists continued to argue that the Sierra Club needed to aggressively support strict immigration controls, citing the destructive effect of unchecked U.S. population growth on the nation’s natural resources.

Three prominent immigration control advocates — UCLA astronomy professor Ben Zuckerman, Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug LaFollette, and Paul Watson, leader of the group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, already had won seats to the board in recent years, putting majority control within the grasp of the dissidents in this year’s election.

Sierra Club leaders said after the landslide vote that they hoped the rancorous dispute had finally been resolved.

“I thought the issue should have been laid to rest after 1998, and I certainly don’t see anything in these results to suggest [members] have had a change of heart,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

“We are delighted that the turnout was so strong. This may have been the largest election turnout ever for a nonprofit organization other than the NRA,” the National Rifle Assn.

However, it quickly became clear on Wednesday that the losing side considered the issue far from resolved. Rather than seeing the results as evidence that Sierra Club members did not support an immigration platform, critics called it proof that dirty tactics by the status quo to promote their favorites had unfairly tipped the scales.

Some dissidents said they were holding out hope that a lawsuit filed recently in San Francisco Superior Court would result in a new election. The suit alleges that Sierra Club leaders violated state laws governing nonprofits by using club funds to promote candidates they had endorsed.

Club officials called the claims groundless. A similar suit by Lamm was withdrawn when Pope and other club officials threatened a countersuit.

“The Sierra Club just elected the best new directors money can buy — but with a lawsuit pending over unfair election practices, justice and truth may yet prevail,” said a losing candidate, Karyn Strickler.

Strickler, who said she did not advocate curbing immigration and was running as an independent reformer, said all candidates who collected petitions to be on the ballot were damaged by an “urgent election notice” to Sierra Club members that accompanied the ballot and warned of “outside groups” seeking to influence the club’s agenda. Under Sierra Club bylaws, some candidates are automatically placed on the ballot by current leaders; others can collect signatures to run.

The ballot notice referred to racist and anti-immigrant websites that had posted stories urging their visitors to vote for immigration-control candidates in the Sierra Club elections, and made similar links to animal rights groups and hemp proponents. As a result of the notice, critics argued that voters were pressured to stick with the candidates endorsed by the current leadership.

During the dawn of the modern environmental movement four decades ago, conservationists widely embraced the goal of global population control. Books such as “The Population Bomb” by Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich painted a dire portrait of a planet straining under man’s increasingly wide footprint.

Yet although many environmentalists still call for worldwide curbs on population, they are increasingly divided over the less-abstract issue of restricting the flood of newcomers to America. According to the U.S. census, the U.S. population, now more than 292 million, could surge by 50% over the next 50 years, largely because of immigrants and their children.

Former Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, one of the founders of Earth Day, sided with immigration control advocates, supporting Cornell University professor David Pimentel.

The two had been active in the Carrying Capacity Network, a population control organization that advocates strict curbs on immigration.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of Waterkeeper Alliance, lent his name to the election campaign to defeat Pimentel and the other insurgents. Actor Robert Redford and MoveOn.Org, the liberal activist network known for helping propel former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean to prominence, also opposed the anti-immigration candidates.

“I think the agenda of those looking to bring immigration to our organization was soundly defeated,” said Sierra Club President Larry Fahn. “We should now focus on reuniting the membership and getting back to our core mission: to protect the planet. And this year, we should focus on the mission most of us consider most important this year: defeating President Bush and his horrendous environmental policies.”

Yet Fahn conceded that anti-immigration candidates were unlikely to give up their fight.

“The debate will continue,” he said. “Many of them feel so passionate that they will continue agitating and never be pacified.”

Foreign workers in South Africa are yet again facing violence and protests by anti-immigrant groups. They accuse them of residing and working in the country illegally and are demanding that they leave by June 30.

South Africa has seen recurrent waves of anti-immigrant violence in the past decade – often directed at other African nationals.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the country has become a destination for thousands of workers from neighbouring countries. But many South Africans say the government is not upholding its immigration laws.

So, does South Africa still need foreign workers?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

William Gumede – Associate professor, School of Governance at the University of the Witwatersrand

Lindiwe Zulu – Member of the ANC Committee on International Relations and a former South African minister of social development

Ashraf Essop – Immigration lawyer