Lindela, says civil society
care, noting a lack of HIV and TB testing and care as well as condoms, among other violations.
The commission recommended home affairs submit a plan to provide these services within three months. It also suggested the department allow civil society monitors into its deportation centre.
The South African Human Rights Commission Act allows the SAHRC to take government departments to court should they fail to implement the body’s recommendations. But in a statement, the commission says it prefers to collaborate with entities such as the police and civil society to resolve violations before it approaches the courts. It credits “political changes” within the department of home affairs with preventing it from following up on its 2014 recommendations about conditions at Lindela.
The department of home affairs has allowed LHR limited access to the detention centre but required 48-hours’ notice of these visits, eliminating any possibility of spot checks.
Mokgola maintains that the department encourages independent oversight of the facility.
After witnessing the dire conditions at Lindela in 2016, MSF — through the SAHRC — offered to help to improve healthcare at the facility by, for instance, training doctors and nurses. MSF has been unable to gain the access it needs through the commission. The terms of the agreement with MSF — which focused more on healthcare provision than monitoring — could not be reached ahead of a deadline earlier this year, says a statement by the body. But MSF says the commission failed to communicate these challenges.
Shroufi characterised MSF’s access as “sporadic and limited”, adding that teams would have needed access three or four days a week for at least six months to improve healthcare at the facility.
Both MSF and LHR have struggled to determine what health services Bosasa is contractually bound to provide — or how much of its budget for Lindela goes to healthcare — because the security giant’s agreement with home affairs is not public. LHR requested a copy of the document in early November, but has not had any feedback, Leung says.
Exerting oversight like this on the department of home affairs could become even harder as there have been calls within the ANC for it to be repositioned and moved into the state’s security architecture, according to a discussion paper released in May. The document suggests contracts with home affairs will be “highly secure” and more tightly regulated under new security requirements.
The new rules could thwart access to facilities like Lindela in the future, says regional advocacy officer at the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa Roshan Dadoo. “There is too much emphasis on state security and not enough on human rights.”
Legislation passed in May will put a newly created central body, the Border Management Authority, in charge of all South Africa’s ports of entry, including policing and customs. Mokgola says that operations at Lindela will continue unchanged, because the authority will only oversee border posts and ports.
There are also plans to build massive border camps for asylum seekers on South Africa’s borders. The department of home affairs plans to outsource health services to private companies and civil society. Dadoo warns that privatising health services in high-security settings such as Lindela and the camps creates more problems than it solves.
“No organisation will have the resources to properly provide these services. Asylum seekers and migrants should be allowed to move freely in the country and use the government services that are already available to them.”
Although many governments have turned to detention as a way of controlling borders over the past two decades, there is no proof that the threat of imprisonment deters migration, 2015 research by the International Detention Coalition found.
Countries that house large numbers of migrants such as Afghanistan, Greece, Romania and Turkey have abandoned detention altogether.
These nations now issue migrants with a temporary permit that allows them to live freely in communities and to access health, education and legal services while their applications to stay in the country legally are being processed.
The coalition also found countries that process migrants in community settings were less likely to detain people wrongfully, reducing legal costs to their governments. Australian research estimates the lifetime health costs related to the trauma of detention amounts to more than R 250 000 a person.
Mokgola told Bhekisisa in May that South Africa’s planned processing units will learn from countries such as Australia, that have established similar detention centres. But detention as a solution to migration makes very little sense for South Africa, research chair on migration at the African Centre for Migration and Society Loren Landau said.
He warned: “The general ethos is not about protection of human rights. It is about ensuring very few people come into South Africa.”