South Africa accuses united states-based NGO of undermining its sovereignty

South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says a United States-based Non-Governmental Organisation is trying to use the legal system to undermine and ambush the country’s sovereignty.

SABC News reported that the NGO approached the High Court in Pretoria seeking the court to compel the SA government to grant asylum to 22 Afghan nationals arguing that the group might be victimized by the Taliban regime.

The High Court then ordered the SA government to grant asylum to the 22 Afghans. Reacting to the High Court order, Motsoaledi said:

On the 14th, our officials in Beitbridge received a letter written by a firm of lawyers saying that they have clients that are coming, 22 of them.

We are warning them that you must be given a transit visa to enter South Africa and apply for asylum, they never named the clients, and they didn’t even mention where they came from.

While the people there were still surprised, 22 people arrived and said they were from Afghanistan and they want to enter the country, their lawyers have given us prior notice and they were carrying visas from Zimbabwe.

Motsoaledi said that the government will be opposing the court order. He said:

Yesterday they went to court to get an interim order that we must allow these people to come in, the return date is on the 7th of March but that court order has been granted that we must allow them in, but the judge realised that we were not in court.

We were not in court because they manipulated the law and processes because they know that we are in Pretoria but they served a junior person in Beitbridge through an email and the person was in the field and only saw the email after 4 hours and after 4 hours they had already been in court and got the order but the judge realised that we were not there and allowed us that we can do something within 24 hours.

In other news – Body of Ghana football star Atsu killed in Türkiye earthquake flown home

The remains of former Ghana international footballer Christian Atsu who died in a devastating earthquake in Türkiye were being flown home on Sunday, the country’s foreign ministry said.

Atsu, 31, was caught up in a 7.8-magnitude quake that rocked Turkey and Syria on February 6, killing more than 44,000 people in both countries. Learn More