About 80 foreigners, including a tourist, were detained in Cape Town for not having their documents on them.
|||Cape Town - Long gone are the days when many South Africans had to carry pass books, but on Tuesday about 80 foreigners, including an Australian tourist, were detained for not having their documents on them.
About 20 people from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Congo stood outside the Cape Town police station waiting for friends and relatives to be released.
They said police conducted a raid and arrested those who didn’t have asylum-seeker papers on them.
Australian tourist Michael Camacho was arrested while curio shopping in Hout Bay. His brother-in-law, Oliver Potgieter, was shocked to receive a call from Camacho saying he had been arrested. “I was really flabbergasted, I didn’t know that carrying your passport was a requirement,” he told John Maytham on Cape Talk.
He said Camacho was held at Caledon Square for about two hours but was not upset about the incident.
Gesel Mpeta waited with her two-month-old child for almost four hours, in the hope of seeing her husband emerge. Mpeta, who was herself detained for two hours, said they weren’t aware they had to have their papers with them at all times.
A sick Gamu Chipuriro, from Zimbabwe, said her cousin was granted permission to look after her and he was arrested while shopping in the city.
“I was at the hospital when my cousin phoned to say he had been arrested. I had to go home to get his papers and come here to wait for him.”
Her cousin had been granted an eight-day access document and they were in the process of extending it but couldn’t raise the R2 000 the department required.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andre Traut said the raid was a joint operation between Home Affairs, law enforcement and the police. “Some of the people are still there, there were about 80 arrests. It was carried out throughout the city and we have these operations on a regular basis.”
yolisa.tswanya@inl.co.za
Cape Argus