Nightclub Arrests

e a surprise raid and ordered revellers to lie down to the floor.
“They just barged into the club in the early hours and ordered the revellers to produce their permits and have their bodies and belongings searched,” said a Zimbabwean national who gave his name as John Tshuma.
The law enforcement officers who had a large police truck popularly known as “gumbakumba” and often used for deporting illegal immigrants left after an hour and half, said Tshuma who is an asylum applicant.
Some of the revellers who were arrested at the night club were released at the police station after it was found out they had genuine papers to live in South Africa.
A worker at the club who spoke on condition he is not named said the raid was mainly targeted at the Zimbabwean and Nigerian immigrants who frequented the club and were suspected of dealing in drugs.
SAPS spokesperson in Cape Town Inspector Bernadine Steyn confirmed that “42 illegal immigrants were arrested on the premises and were taken to Maitland Police station, from where they were transported on a later stage to Pollsmoor Prison.”
Deaprtment of Home Affairs spokesperson, Mantshele Tau, said on Tuesday said the arrests of illegal immigrants was an ongoing process.
Tau could not elaborate where the illegal immigrants were at the time of writing but said they would eventually be sent to the Lindela Home Affairs facility from where they could be deported.
He also could not confirm the nationality of the arrested illegal immigrants.
In December the department of immigration and SAPS launched a similar exercise in Cape Town’s informal settlements which netted more than 20 illegal immigrants.
At the time the department of Home Affairs said that the exercise was a “routine operation” meant to rid the country of illegal immigrants.- CAJ News