{"id":248852,"date":"2023-02-01T16:32:39","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T14:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children\/"},"modified":"2023-02-01T16:32:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T14:32:39","slug":"operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Dudula accused of targeting children"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/202101general\/school-20211119-img_3080hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Operation Dudula says the Gauteng school budget must be spent on South African children only. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Operation Dudula has been accused of targeting immigrant children in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, running a campaign to pull them out of school.<\/li>\n<li>According to a WhatsApp message quoted by activist organisation Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Operation Dudula says places in schools must be kept for South African children.<\/li>\n<li>Asked to comment, an Operation Dudula spokesperson swore at this reporter and slammed down the phone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Activist organisation Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia (KAAX) has accused Operation Dudula of running a campaign to pull immigrant children out of classrooms in Diepsloot, Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on 30 January, KAAX quoted a WhatsApp message signed by Che Serobedi from Operation Dudula Diepsloot, calling on members and parents of school-going children to attend a mass meeting on 26 January.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll leaners\/children who did not get space at all local schools will be put in classes and foreigners who are learners will be removed from classes,\u201d the message read. \u201cAs Operation Dudula Diepsloot branch and parents we can\u2019t allow South African children to be out of school this year. Foreigners are accommodated and learning in our public schools \u2026 No retreat no surrender.\u201d<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>GroundUp\u2019s repeated attempts to contact Serobedi to confirm the origin and contents of the message were unsuccessful. After several phone calls to him without getting a reply, we repeatedly called Operation Dudula national spokesperson Zandile Dabula, but her phone went unanswered. We left a WhatsApp message which was not read. Finally, on Tuesday Serobedi returned our call.<\/p>\n<p>He wanted to know if GroundUp was a Zimbabwean publication. Asked why this was important, and urged to answer the allegations from KAAX, he said:<\/p>\n<p>He replied, \u201cI won\u2019t answer, that\u2019s rude. The Gauteng Department of Education budget is for South African children. Fuck you \u2026\u201d. He then slammed down the phone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTargeting children is the height of cowardice,\u201d said KAAX.<\/p>\n<p>The organisation said it acknowledged that there was a crisis in Grade 1 in Gauteng, where approximately 5,000 children are yet to be placed in school. \u201cHowever, we strongly condemn laying the blame on migrant families and targeting kids of six and seven years, for the Department of Education\u2019s failures to plan adequately.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis action takes place at the same time that Operation Dudula members are removing people including pregnant women and small children without South Africa IDs from public clinics. Several clinics have been attacked in the last week.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Constitution guarantees the rights to health and education to \u2018everyone\u2019 and the courts have explicitly confirmed that no child, regardless of status, can be denied access to the public school system and that no person may be denied access to primary health care. Operation Dudula\u2019s statements and actions in this regard are flagrantly unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe demand that the police as well as the Departments of Basic Education and Health uphold the law and do their jobs\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gauteng Department of Education spokesperson Steve Mabona told GroundUp on Wednesday that the department \u201cis aware of the WhatsApp messages that were circulating in the community\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, schools were not disturbed as teaching and learning resumed as normal on the said day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mabona said the department\u2019s walk-in centre was still open to help new applicants for places in schools.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Operation Dudula says the Gauteng school budget must be spent on South African children only. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks Operation Dudula has been accused of targeting immigrant children in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, running a campaign to pull them out of school. According to a WhatsApp message quoted by activist organisation Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Operation Dudula [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":248853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-248852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/operation-dudula-accused-of-targeting-children.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}