Declare a State of Disaster to end Durban’s repatriation gridlock

The escalating humanitarian crisis taking place at the Sherwood Hall grounds in Durban is no longer just a localised breakdown of order — it is, by definition of South Africa’s Disaster Management Act No. 57 of 2002 (DMA), a de facto disaster.

Thousands of displaced Malawian nationals are living in a suburban space with no bathing facilities, limited sanitation and inadequate waste infrastructure. As winter approaches, cold nights sheltering under makeshift marquees have the potential to spread influenza among highly vulnerable infants, small children and pregnant women.

Xenophobic tensions are boiling over, and the longer this administration takes to mobilise resources, the more hatred is accrued. This animosity is trickling down from frustrated adults to impressionable children, actively breeding a new generation of systemic Afrophobia within our communities.

According to reporting by GroundUp, what started as 75 Malawians fleeing intimidation at the Burnwood informal settlement quickly expanded to 1,200 persons.

The Witness spoke to ward councillors monitoring the situation and reported that this had grown to an estimated 10,000 people amid heightened threats to illegal immigrants.

This sudden influx of Malawians who are awaiting the opportunity to leave has overwhelmed the capacity of the Sherwood Hall grounds and has contributed to a collapse of suburban hygiene and safety in the community.

The numbers continue to grow as vigilante intimidation tactics force foreign nationals (both legal and illegal) to seek safety ahead of the 30 June deadline set by March and March Movement organisers for illegal immigrants to leave South Africa.

The national government — which holds the legal responsibility for border control, national security and monitoring regional migration — while denying the legitimacy of the 30 June date, has committed to doubling its processing staff on-site, and the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration has been actively coordinating with the Malawian embassy.

However, the crushing operational and financial burden of maintaining thousands of people while administrative processes slowly take place has been offloaded onto civil society organisations, including Gift of the Givers, the World Food Programme, Gift of the Needy and City Hope. The state appears to have privatised its humanitarian obligations to local charities.

Radical legal shift

To resolve this impasse requires a radical legal shift: the eThekwini Municipality, with the support of the province, should declare a local State of Disaster.

While the city’s sudden 72-hour multi-agency blitz — deploying water tankers, mobile clinics and virtual courts — shows that resources can be mobilised, executing a de facto disaster response purely through a securitised law enforcement lens sets a dangerous precedent.

We no longer need a formal “declaration” simply to catalyse bureaucratic action; rather, we need it to govern the integrity of that action. This must not be done as a means to build a “refugee camp”, which our laws reject. Instead, a formal activation of the Disaster Management Act is needed to transition this operation from an ad hoc policing crackdown into a well-structured, transparent and legally accountable humanitarian framework.

We have seen in previous incidents, such as floods or droughts, that a municipal State of Disaster declaration can allow for extraordinary statutory coordination.

Currently, eThekwini is absorbing much of the financial blow by diverting municipal funds for shuttle buses, extra security and emergency utilities to manage the crisis caused fundamentally by national border control and immigration failures. This is a fiscal trap for our local government.

By formally invoking Section 55 of the DMA, the government can legally unlock specific emergency funding streams, and it can “mobilise and release any personnel of an organ of state” for deployment. This ensures that the financial burden is shared more equitably across spheres of government rather than undermining municipal budgets.

A formal declaration mandates the publication of official, gazetted emergency regulations, which force transparency. Without this overarching plan, we see erratic municipal manoeuvres — such as the recent attempt to utilise the Tills Crescent Grounds, which provoked an urgent revolt from Ward 31 residents and forced an embarrassing U-turn.

Transparent logistical map

A formal disaster framework replaces the ad hoc, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood political friction with a transparent, legally sound logistical map, stabilising the new staging area at the old Durban Drive-in site without breeding further local panic.

As the municipality moves beyond voluntary repatriation to an expedited rapid-fire deportation pipeline, an emergency framework is essential to protect the rule of law.

When speed and numbers become the state’s main metrics of success, human rights are easily compromised. A formal disaster declaration legally binds all operating organs of state, including the Department of Home Affairs, South African Police Service and the newly established virtual courts to the primary statutory objectives of the DMA – the mitigation of human suffering and the preservation of life.

It provides the necessary constitutional guidance to ensure that the expedited actions do not disregard due process and that the judicial review process remains unassailable.

Transportation logistics remain an issue. Using a disaster declaration could help South Africa and Malawi to activate their partnership with the International Organization for Migration to seek access to global emergency funds for scaling up transport using additional buses or charter flights.

South Africa’s Constitution is the supreme law of the country. It guarantees human dignity and due process to everyone within our borders — not just its citizens.

As a country, we cannot afford to ostracise ourselves from regional trading partners in the Southern African Development Community, nor can we allow the brutal optics that mirror the hard-line “nativist” rhetoric in the US or as seen in the recent anti-immigration rallies in Northern Ireland

We must call for calm heads and quick, organised action. By utilising the Disaster Management Act not as a fiscal trap, but as an administrative weapon to fast-track respectful, well-coordinated repatriation, we can protect families, appease frustrated neighbourhoods, and seek to restore the rule of law while ensuring our Constitution’s integrity. DM