Operation Dudula

Operation Dudula launched in Cape Town on Saturday, 14 May 2022. Photo: Storm Simpson / The South African

Operation Dudula makes demands on Home Affairs, police at Cape Town launch

‘The plan is to shut down the country if they don’t listen to our grievances. I respect the police but this is too much,’ said Operation Dudula Cape Town coordinator, Jonathan Buja.

Operation Dudula

Operation Dudula launched in Cape Town on Saturday, 14 May 2022. Photo: Storm Simpson / The South African

Operation Dudula announced itself in Cape Town with a circuitous march through the city’s streets on Saturday, 14 May. Supporters of the “anti-illegal foreigner” group delivered a memorandum to the Department of Home Affairs that implored them “to do their job”

OPERATION DUDULA LAUNCHES IN CAPE TOWN

The protest wound its way from District Six down Darling, Adderley, Plein, and Roeland streets before coming to a halt near the Cape Town Central Police Station in Buitenkant.

Along the way, members of the controversial group, which has been described as xenophobic, hurled abuse at businesses that employed so-called illegal foreigners.

Members also chanted “Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans, Portugal for the Portuguese” and variations of the saying.

Operation Dudula formed in Gauteng in the wake of the July unrest and is closely associated with the #PutSouthAfricansFirst movement that gained traction on social media. The banners of both movements were carried side by side along Cape Town’s streets.

The memorandum addressed to Home Affairs demanded that Section 41 of the Immigration Act be enforced “on every foreigner roaming the streets of Cape Town and surroundings.”

The group wants the government to scan and verify all migrants’ documents and wants those in the country without the necessary documents to be deported.

“Today, we came here in Cape Town to say Home Affairs must do their job because anyone who enters our country illegally must be arrested.

“Another thing, we came here to tell police that they must be visible in all our townships here in Cape Town, especially Khayelitsha, the Cape Flats, Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu or Nyanga. They must be visible,” said Operation Dudula Regional Secretary of Greater Tshwane, Patrick Mokgalusi, to The South African.

MODUS OPERANDI

Mokgalusi said Operation Dudula’s modus operandi is simple. They see themselves as a pressure group that seeks to ensure that the government enforces its own laws.

“What we do is gather information and give it to the relevant department. If it’s drugs we give that information to the police to operationalise. If it’s illegal immigrants, it is home affairs,” he said.

Mokgalusi said Operation Dudula’s people in the Western Cape told them about the alleged underage prostitution ring in Parklands, Cape Town that made headlines last week.

“They gave us the details and then we are going to forward it to a certain station commander then he must deal with that decisively once and for all. We can’t come back here again for the same offence. They must arrest those people,” he said.

READ: ‘Arrest these rapists’: EFF weighs in on Parklands ‘prostitution scheme

In April, President Cyril Ramaphosa condemned the group and described it as a “vigilante type” organisation that the ANC “cannot support.”

“We cannot support a vigilante-type of move against a group of people — and particularly targeting them as foreign nationals, because when we are doing then is just to divide our people on the African continent,” said Ramaphosa.

Mokgalusi distanced Operation Dudula from the outbreaks of violence that have been associated with the group. He said the group does not have a monopoly on the word “Dudula” and it is also used by other groups that he refused to name.

He said the group cannot fight lawlessness with lawlessness and would conduct all its activities within the bounds of the law.

Cape Town regional coordinator, Jonathan Baju, said Operation Dudulawants to work hand-in-hand with law enforcement.

“We want to work hand in hand. Maybe to help them find these places – maybe they don’t know these places or they act like they don’t know. The plan is to shut down the country if they don’t listen to our grievances. I respect the police but this is too much,” said Baju.

Operation Dudula
Cape Town regional coordinator, Jonathan Baju, addressed the crowd at the memorandum handover. Photo: Storm Simpson / The South African

The places Baju refers to are alleged crime hotspots. He told The South African that Operation Dudula would have a task force to spot “those locations” wherever there is a crime.

Next to illegal immigration, the crime the group is most focused on tackling is drug dealing, which it says is destroying South Africans, especially the youth.

Earlier this year, the group’s leader Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini was arrested and charged with housebreaking, assault and malicious damage to property after the group raided the home of a suspected drug dealer.

Ahead of the planned march, the Democratic Alliance in the Western Cape called on the province’s residents to stand against “hatred, intolerance and vigilantism.”

“Whilst everyone is indeed entitled to the right of peaceful assembly, this organisation forms part of the concerning trend of xenophobia and Afrophobia that is spreading across South Africa,” said Provincial acting spokesperson on Community Safety, Ricardo Mackenzie.

Mokgalusi said Operation Dudula would be launching in Mpumalanga and Limpopo in the coming weeks.