Members of Operation Dudula in Cape Town have given six factories in Witsand, outside Atlantis, seven days to fire illegal immigrants allegedly working in their businesses.
About 150 members of the group which is accused of xenophobia and Afrophobia in South Africa marched to factories on Wednesday.
They handed over a memorandum including a demand that the owners remove the immigrants as their employees.
The Operation Dudula members warned the businesses that if they failed to fire foreign nationals within the seven days, they will rope in the relevant law enforcement agencies or the Department of Home Affairs to enforce their immigration policy. Read the memorandum:
Our people are not working and they are unemployed, yet our factories are employing foreigners.
Small businesses in our communities are also owned by them; the rate of crime is high.
Operation Dudula member Nkululeko Watermayer said they wanted to “reclaim back jobs”.
PC Revalidation managing director Dale Lewis confirmed the visit adding that the group insisted that the company stops employing “illegal” immigrants. Said, Lewis:
They came to our business a few weeks ago, there were about ten of them. They gave us a letter insisting that we stop employing illegal immigrants and develop South African youth. I was horrified.
This time there were about 150 people, they gave our production manager about 50 CVs and another memorandum.
The Dudula leader group is horribly misinformed and should be embarrassed by their selection of our business for their protest. We do not employ illegal immigrants.
Of the approximately 42 staff we have, six foreign nationals we have all have papers allowing them legal employment in South Africa.
We only employ people living in the greater Atlantis, Mamre/Witsand area and the business is 80% black women-owned.
We promote learning and have had engineers completing their engineering diplomas by doing their in-service training in our business.
We believe this is the best we can do to develop South African youth within the financial constraints of our business.
The foreign nationals that we employ all live in and contribute to the community.
Lewis said the business reserved the right to employ anyone who is legally allowed to be employed in South Africa adding they will take legal action should any further attempts be made to intimidate their workers.
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