Hon Van der Merwe this concept that is being quoted all the time that the department agreed that it does not have legal capacity or resources is misused, it's abused.
These were legal terms used by our lawyer in an ongoing case in Pretoria, answering to an affidavit by the City of Tshwane which said... the rate payers association in Tshwane, are taking first and foremost the city that it must apply the bylaws which I'm still saying, when the bylaws are being bridged and broken, it does not matter
who is doing that, whether you are documented or not, whether you are a South African, American or British you must be removed because people have pitched tents at people's homes, washing in the streets etc. It's a bridge of bylaws.
We were saying that is the job that must be done by the City Council. The fact that the City Council of Tshwane being the DA municipality rushed to a DA member here to claim that we say we don't have capacity is wrong.
The legal capacity that our lawyer, Mr Seth Nthai was mentioning was that we are not legally given the power in terms of the law to remove someone who is squatting because he is breaking a bylaw. That's not the Department of Home Affairs' legal capacity.
When he said we've got no resources, it's because the city was saying we must look for alternative accommodation and remove those people and have them accommodated by home affairs. Again, it's not in any of our plans or our mandates and that's what the lawyer
meant. So, people must stop saying we have agreed that we don't have legal capacity to document people, we do have.
Now, finally in this response I am saying when a person is undocumented, they are undocumented because most of them came illegally and they don't want to be documented and they go into hiding.