The department of home affairs is embroiled in a legal showdown with lawyers representing survivors of the Usindiso fire tragedy who want to stop 32 undocumented migrants being deported.
The lawyers argue that expelling the 32 people would compromise the work of the Khampepe commission established by Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi to investigate the cause of the fire in August in which 77 people, including 12 children, died.
The blaze at 80 Albert Street, in a building owned by the City of Johannesburg, has spawned several legal proceedings.
On Thursday, at a five-hour meeting with survivors’s representatives held in chambers at the Johannesburg high court, lawyers for the city agreed to improve the living conditions of survivors who have been moved from Hofland Park Recreational Centre to shacks erected for them in Denver, an industrial area.
A court order was issued compelling the city to install four standpipes and proper drainage at the Denver site within 60 days, and to erect 20 more toilets in addition to the existing 30.
The order compels the city to provide prepaid electricity supply at the new site within three months and to provide security to prevent land invasions.
Earlier this month police, metro police and Gauteng crime prevention wardens joined officials of the city and the department of home affairs in raiding the Hofland Park Recreation Centre, where Usindiso survivors had been sheltering.
Home affairs detained 32 undocumented migrants and sent them to the Lindela repatriation centre, while the rest — South African nationals — were moved to Shalazile Camp in Denver, where the city has erected shacks to house people from various shelters across the city.
Zanele Malusi, a deputy director of Johannesburg’s human settlements department, said 240 Usindiso survivors were now at Shalazile, along with other people who had been relocated after evictions and fires elsewhere.
Former Usindiso residents told the Sunday Times they arrived at Shalazile to find only one water tap serving everyone and no electricity. The shacks could not be locked from the inside, and had holes in their roofs.
Nondumiso Sithole, 26, said: “We are scared as women. There are gunshots at night, particularly on weekends... The shacks have holes so there is cold air that comes inside. All my [four] children have flu. The roof is also leaking. It is just a total mess.”
Sithole said residents tried to get wood scraps from security guards in the area so they could make cooking fires.
Sibongile Majwababa, 33, said she went to nearby businesses to ask for unused wood she could use to insulate her shack against the heat.
“It is too hot inside for the children. I’m hoping the place will cool down a little. We cook outside and on Saturday we are not allowed to make fires because most of the community surrounding the Denver hostel is from the Shembe church,” she said.
They have direct knowledge of the event that led to the fire; their evidence is essential
— Advocate Nick Ferreira
At the meeting on Thursday, Mpho Makgato, counsel for the city, said his client would not be told by the survivors’ lawyers how to fulfil its constitutional obligations.
“The independence of the municipality must be borne in mind. We are a wing of government. We run Johannesburg... I respect the purview of the law but it cannot be that the human rights lawyers are now dictating to the city, which is acting within the confines of legislation,” he said.
The survivors’ lawyers, from Norton Rose Fulbright, lodged an urgent application to stop home affairs deporting the 32 undocumented foreigners.
Masonwabe Mhambi, counsel for home affairs, said the deportation issue had been dealt with by the Johannesburg magistrate’s court on Monday when it ruled that the detention of the 32 foreigners was lawful.
Magistrate Peter du Plessis said the department of home affairs should inform judge Sisi Khampepe of their detention.
Mhambi said on Thursday: “Those individuals in Lindela will not be deported without consulting with the commission to find out who is registered as a witness in the hearing.”
He said another 46 undocumented migrants who had been living at Hofland Park had disappeared.
Advocate Nick Ferreira, for the survivors, said the high court had to interdict the deportation in the interests of the commission of inquiry, because some of those in Lindela were “essential witnesses”.
“It is not disputed... that some of them were present when the fires started; they have direct knowledge of the event that led to the fire; their evidence is essential if the Khampepe commission is to discharge its mandate of uncovering the truth as to how that fire started,” he said.
Judgment on the application was reserved.
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