by: Odwa Mkentane
Community activist and founder of the Nehemiah Call Initiative Pastor Dean Ramjoomia held a protest outside the Home Affairs building in the Cape Town CBD on Thursday against the call by the March and March group to deport illegal foreigners, stating that the call is only targeted at poor Black people.
Ramjoomia held a protest outside the Home Affairs building on Thursday morning and later went to the DA Federal Head Office, calling for the repatriation not to be racialised. The pastor has also raised concerns that political parties use xenophobia during their campaigns.
“Having done a little bit of a background check on when this whole thing of rejection of our brothers and sisters from the continent began. And as I go back, I find out Gayton McKenzie, in part of his run-up to the election in 2024, was making a big deal of it,” he said.
Speaking to VOC News, Ramjoomia compares the action to colonial tactics, arguing that there are many illegal foreigners from Canada, America, and Europe who live in the country but are not targeted.
“So this situation is very much like a colonialist button that has been pressed upon our people. And part of that is also a lot of this, which we refer to as “spaza shops”; in the process, over the last five to ten years, has taken a substantial amount of money away from your general retail shops, your Checkers, your Shoprite, your Pick n Pay and all of these others. And that has become the problem because when we provide for ourselves, then we are bad,” he said.
VOC
