DURBAN - The anti-illegal immigration group, March and March, has called on SADC leaders to repatriate their undocumented citizens currently residing in South Africa.
The organisation staged a demonstration outside the 46th SADC Summit in Durban on Monday under the theme 'It's time to fetch your people'.
It was at this protest that March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma questioned why civil society groups were not being given a stronger voice at the summit, saying their voices matter because they bring real-life experiences.
“We can reference real, real things. You know, instead of them looking at each other, clapping for each other and, and you know, making false promises to each other. We, the people, deserve to know what they're discussing there. And those things are going to be affecting our lives at the end of the day,” she said.
She called for stronger border controls and legislation aimed at what she described as "protecting South Africans and putting South Africans first".
READ | March and March targets SADC summit
“We want something that is practical, and we want a government that listens to its people, not a government that pretends that they're listening while they're carrying on with their window dressing session.
“They were rushing for the 30th of June because they thought we'd be going around hunting illegal immigrants. That's why they were having these meetings. Now they've gone quiet. But that's going to make people even angrier to realise that the government is just ignoring them,” she said.
Ngobese-Zuma warned heads of state to prepare for mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals by 30 September.
She said the organisation would continue its campaign with “a bit more intensity”, arguing that South Africans were tired of feeling unsafe in their own country.
“We don't mind having foreigners in our country who are properly documented, who are here doing correct things, who love the country as much as we do. Not people sitting here trying to rip the country of all that it has and then knowing that they're going to go back to their country the minute all of it is over.