Operation Dudula Demands The Removal Of All Foreign Teachers
Operation Dudula, an anti-immigrant group in South Africa, claims that country’s government prioritises jobs and placements for foreign illegal nationals over South Africans.
On Wednesday, 12 October 2022, scores of Operation Dudula members marched to the Gauteng Department of Education in the Johannesburg CBD.
They were demanding employment opportunities for locally qualified unemployed educators.
Addressing the protesters, Operation Dudula’s National Coordinator Thabo Ngayo, said:
We are unapologetic about that comrades, they can call us names or xenophobic. The law of this country is the law of the country.
We cannot allow lawlessness while we are watching. There are those coming from other countries turning ours into a banana country.
We can’t allow foreign nationals to do as they wish without even proper documents to come and work in our country.
Operation Dudula gave Gauteng MEC for Education Matome Chiloane three weeks to adhere to their demands.
Chiloane told SABC News that they will engage with Operation Dudula leadership to find common ground on issues that they raised. Said Chiloane:
I think it is crucial to have a meeting with them. Firstly they said they’ve never met the department, so we will have a meeting with them.
And by the time we meet, we would have been able to prepare a response to their memorandum. So we would be able to give them a listen.
In Limpopo Province, Operation Dudula marched to the offices of the Limpopo Department of Education in Polokwane and submitted a memorandum of demands.
Dudula demanded that children of undocumented nationals should not be admitted to public schools.
It also demanded that the Department should not provide financial assistance for learners whose parents are undocumented foreign nationals.
Dudula further demanded that Department should not employ teachers of foreign origin in public schools. Operation Dudula Limpopo Secretary Grace Mamonyamane, said:
We have about 10 000 foreigners that are employed by the department of education nationally, so we know that our own are not getting jobs because the posts have been occupied by those foreigners.
Limpopo Education Department’s Naphtali Molope promised to respond to the demands in due course. Said Molope:
Because the intention was to deliver the memorandum to the MEC as it is addressed to her, we will take the memorandum to her as collective leadership, and we will respond to the issues they are raising.
