South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has called on the country’s police officers to conduct “spot checks” on foreign nationals to weed out undocumented foreigners.
Motsoaledi said the police should ensure that foreign nationals produce documentation proving that they are illegally in the country, failing which they should be arrested and deported.
“Every police officer has the right to do spot checks and check documents against the national population register,” Motsoaledi told journalists on Tuesday.
It is, however, not clear if the exercise would cover all foreign nationals or would be targeted at black foreigners from other African countries as has been the case with the ongoing anti-foreigner sentiment that has rocked the country over the past few month.
There has been a recent surge in anti-foreigner sentiment, with local vigilante groups and officials accusing undocumented immigrants mostly from Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe of fuelling crime in the country and of taking away their economic or social opportunities.
This saw vigilante group, Operation Dudula, last month blocking the entrance to a Johannesburg hospital and chasing away foreign black patients.
This action came hot on the heels of an incident in which a senior health official from Limpopo province chastised a Zimbabwean patient for abusing South Africa’s health resources at the expense of locals.
JN/APA