Lindela horror revealed: 43 die in 4 months

Lindela horror revealed: 43 die in 4 months

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By Staff Reporter

FORTY-THREE migrants, 28 of them thought to be Zimbabweans, died between April and July this year at the notorious South African Lindela Immigration Holding Facility, a damning Independent Committee of Inquiry report released Friday revealed.

In her first reaction to the report, South Africa's Home Affairs Minister Mapisa Nqakula said: "This report is indeed a damning report and a real indictment on our work as a department."

The independent inquiry committee was headed by Rev. Otto Mbangula, who is a retired minister of the Methodist Church. It was asked to look at four deaths in detail, including those of two Zimbabweans Mcabangeleni Mlambo, 22, and Alice Tshuma, 18, who both died in mid-July.

The committee did not give a breakdown on the nationalities of the dead, but it said nine had died in holding cells while another 411 were hospitalised during the same period.

Among other things, the committee established that:

• The Lindela holding facility was overcrowded, at times with up to 50 inmates sharing a single room designed to hold 30 people

• Most of the deaths could have been prevented if the medical care facility had enough capacity to deal with cases of people who are sick

• Most of the deaths were diagnosed as resulting from meningitis

• Medical staff were poorly trained to deal with the health hazard at the facility

• Security guards routinely used tear gas as a form of crowd control

Gabriel Shumba of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF) who attended a briefing with Nqakula on Friday morning said: "There are still unanswered questions for the Zimbabwean community here. ZEF is concerned that even those who are legal residents have no access to Section 22 papers, which allow for seeking asylum and are therefore deported as illegal immigrants.

"Secondly, those who get the initial papers enabling them to seek asylum find it impossible to see a refugee reception officer for interviews as the queues are frightening to the extent that many have often slept outside the Home Affairs offices for weeks on end. Some are even arrested there.

"Another point of contention is that Zimbabwe Embassy officials are allowed to identify Zimbabweans before they are deported, and upon arrival in Zimbabwe, they suffer further torture and some have been reported to have disappeared."

The inquiry was instituted early August following a series of deaths at the centre. When she announced the inquiry, Nqakula lashed out at Home Affairs officials for keeping details of the deaths away from her. On Friday, she was equally scathing, accepting there was nowhere to hide for her department and vowed to turn things around.

She said: "I must reiterate our position that, our intention is to have an environment where the management of migration in South Africa, is conducted in a manner that is legal, humane and within a culture of human rights. That these human rights that are enshrined in our constitution are not necessarily only limited to those born in our country, but to humanity as a whole."

She said she had also instructed a delay to the finalisation of the tender process aimed at identifying a service provider to manage a holding facility for detainees, until such time when her department had agreed on how best to include and take forward the recommendations of the committee.

"I have also directed that a separate service provider dedicated to the provision of health care be sought with a view to remove the management of health care facility from the general management of the Centre," said Nqakula.

"I will be having further meetings with some of my Cabinet colleagues whose input will be crucial in taking the recommendations of the committee forward. These will include the Ministers of Health, Social Development, Safety and Security and Foreign Affairs. An inter-departmental task team comprising these departments will monitor the implementation of these recommendations."

Unofficial estimates say there are over two million Zimbabweans in South Africa, many of whom have fled the economic and political crisis in the Southern African country. Last year, it was revealed that South Africa had granted less than 20 Zimbabweans asylum in the past decade.

Nqakula said while they pursued the so called "quiet diplomacy" towards Zimbabwe, and that albeit there is a "perceived relationship with Zanu PF", South Africa would not deport back to Zimbabwe genuine asylum seekers whose life will be at peril.
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