Activists have returned to court in South Africa to try to enforce a court order banning an anti-migrant group from blocking foreign nationals from accessing public health facilities and schools.
The campaigners say that migrants and their children are still being barred from two Johannesburg clinics by Operation Dudula, a controversial group, despite a judge ordering authorities to “stop the harassment” in December, said News 24.
In the Zulu language “dudula” means to remove something by force. The “populist movement” was founded in 2021 as a vigilante group working against crime and drug trafficking in the township of Soweto, just outside Johannesburg, said Deutsche Welle.
Operation Dudula, now registered as a political party, also campaigns against migrants in South Africa, which is home to about 2.4 million of them, or just under 4% of the population. They come mainly from neighbouring countries such as Mozambique, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
The group’s supporters are known for “aggressive tactics”, including “forcing their way into residential buildings, searching for migrants, checking their ID cards and blocking access to public services”.
In 2022, a report by the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria found that many of Operation Dudula’s claims were based on exaggerations about the number and effect of foreign nationals in South Africa, including “false claims that immigrants commit the most crimes or overload public services”.
But the “fringe movement poses no real threat” to the country’s democracy, Lizette Lancaster, one of the report’s authors, told DW, because “most South Africans, over 90%, do not support violence against migrants in their communities”. |
