30 arrested after anti-immigration protests in Durban and Soweto as police deployments stay in place

Thirty people have been arrested after anti-undocumented-immigration protests in the Durban CBD, Soweto and Johannesburg this week, the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure said. Twenty-five of the arrests were in KwaZulu-Natal and five in Gauteng. The offences cited include public violence, illegal gathering, obstruction and resisting arrest.

NATJOINTS said heightened police deployments will remain in place at hotspots in Durban and Johannesburg. As SABC News reported on 10 October, the structure briefed on the deployments and the arrest figures.

NATJOINTS, the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, is the standing coordinating body that brings the South African Police Service together with the State Security Agency, the defence force and other departments when a security operation crosses more than one province or more than one arm of the state. When NATJOINTS says deployments will remain in place, it means the operation is still being run as a coordinated national one rather than handed back to a single provincial commissioner.

The protests were about undocumented immigration. That is the question the people who marched say is being left unanswered, and it is the question the state has to answer now.

The record on what has been done about it is thin. The Department of Home Affairs has not, in the material available, said what it will change in response to this week’s protests. It has not said whether it will increase inspections, remove people who have no right to be in the country, or speed up the processing of asylum and permit applications that leave people waiting for years. It has not said what it will do about the pressure on clinics, schools, housing and informal trading that residents in the affected areas say they are living with.

The police record is more specific. The arrests are the state’s own count. What the record does not answer is who the accused are, what each is actually charged with, whether any of them are South African or foreign nationals, what their immigration or asylum status is where the state has established it, and what ages the state or the court has established. It does not say whether any firearm was used, whether any firearm was licensed and to whom, or whether any weapon was recovered. It does not say how many people were injured or how seriously. It does not give a date for the next court appearance.

Those are the questions that must be put and answered from the record. Until they are, the public has an arrest count and not a case.

What ordinary people will notice is the deployment. Police visibility in the Durban CBD and in the Johannesburg areas named as hotspots will stay high. That means road closures, stop-and-search operations and a heavier police presence in the parts of the city where people work, trade and travel. It also means the underlying argument about undocumented immigration has not been settled by the arrests. The people who marched say the load on their communities is real. The state has not yet said what it will do about that load.

The next dated step is the court appearance of the 30 arrested. That date has not been given in the material available. When it is, it will be the first point at which the state has to put its case on the record, name the accused where the law allows, and answer what each is charged with.

Until then, the deployment stays and the question stays with it.