POLITICAL BUREAU
LAWYERS for Human Rights (LHR) has welcomed ANC MP Maggie Maunye’s apology for remarks she made about foreigners in Parliament last week.
Last Friday, the organisation called on Maunye to publicly retract her statements and assist in finding solutions “so that everyone within South Africa’s borders can enjoy their rights under the law”.
Maunye, who chairs the parliamentary oversight committee on home affairs, implied during a meeting of the committee last Wednesday that foreigners coming to South Africa were soaking up resources.
She questioned the use of human rights laws and the constitution to accommodate foreigners, and suggested that, instead, they should be turned away, as was the case in Spain.
“Really, this intake, for how long are we going to continue with this as South Africans? Is it not going to affect our resources, the economy of the country?” she said.
“We’ve never enjoyed our freedom as South Africans. We got it in 1994 and we had floods and floods of refugees or undocumented people in the country, and we always want to pretend it’s nothing like that.”
On Sunday, the ANC chief whip’s office issued a statement saying Maunye had “carefully reflected” on the comments which might have been construed to be xenophobic, and had recognised “that her views, although not so intended, may have run counter to the letter and spirit of ANC policies”.
She realised her remarks might have been insensitive to the plight of many African foreigners who were legitimately in South Africa or here as a result of hardships in their own countries.
“Comrade Maunye deeply regrets the comments and unconditionally apologises for the harm they may have caused,” said the statement.
But this was only after Lawyers for Human Rights issued a statement of their own last Friday, saying it was unacceptable that the chairwoman of the portfolio committee monitoring South Africa’s implementation of its international human rights obligations could take such an uninformed and blatantly xenophobic view of contributions made by foreign nationals in building a modern South Africa.
“This is particularly discouraging considering that these comments were made by a senior member of Parliament whose duty it is to uphold the law.
“These unfortunate comments have come at a time of increased tension across Gauteng and where memories of the 2008 violence where foreign nationals were targeted for violence and destruction of their property are not far from mind,” the statement said.
It said Maunye would do better to scrutinise mismanagement of the Department of Home Affairs’s asylum management directorate during the 11 years that the Refugees Act had been in place.
Yesterday, the organisation’s Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh said they were happy with the apology.