Department hiring lawyers to fight flood of litigation

The Home Affairs Department, on the receiving end of about 50 new cases every week, is hiring legally qualified people in its directorates of immigration affairs and civic services to monitor and act quickly to tackle these issues. ‘On a weekly basis we have to respond and instruct state attorneys to defend matters. Some of them are opportunistic litigations,’ deputy DG for institutional planning and support Thulani Mavuso is quoted as saying in a Cape Times report. It notes the department revealed in response to a question in Parliament that it spent R46.3m on legal costs in 2011/2012 and R21.3m in the previous financial year. In 2014, out of 404 judgments granted against the department, 385 involved detention of illegal foreigners at Lindela Repatriation Centre or asylum seekers who filed judicial reviews when their initial applications were rejected. Mavuso said ‘opportunistic litigation ... in the area of immigration is quite huge.’ The same applies when people are arrested for fraudulent documents or documents that are invalid and then taken to Lindela. ‘You have lawyers who make Lindela a hunting ground for those cases,’ he said. ‘The posts have been advertised and we hope those people will monitor matters,’ he said. When the department presented their budget to Parliament this year, it noted the lack of capacity in its legal services, risk management, information services, financial management and counter corruption and security services, says the report.