In an interview
with IOL News, Dabula said South Africa would not be dictated to by outsiders
and rubbished Zanu-PF’s claims that Operation Dudula was promoting colonial-era
divisions.
“We will not be
dictated to by foreigners on how to run our country. We have the Constitution
that is supposed to be guiding us, we have immigration laws that we use as
guiding documents,” Dabula said.
Her comments
came in response to Zanu-PF’s director of information, Farai Marapira, who
earlier told IOL that Operation Dudula’s campaign against undocumented migrants
was “a betrayal of Ubuntu” and a continuation of colonial-era tactics of
dividing Africans.
Marapira argued
that Africans could not be called foreigners on their own continent, stressing
that borders were imposed during colonialism.
But Dabula
fired back, calling his remarks baseless.
“For Farai
(Marapira) to talk about these unfounded allegations, that we are funded by
former colonisers, that is definitely not true. How are we going to be funded
by the very same people who we are working against?” she said.
"They
should focus on fixing their country, Zimbabwe. It is the very same former
colonisers they chased away in their country, hence they are in problems. They
are sitting with land, and they are doing nothing about it. That is why the
very same Zimbabweans are fleeing to South Africa, to take up our spaces, not
just in South Africa but they are all over the world seeking better life."
Dabula insisted
that Zimbabweans were in South Africa in far greater numbers than official
estimates suggested, accusing them of putting pressure on jobs, schools, and
public services.
“He also spoke
about us having one million Zimbabweans in this country. That’s a lie. There is
way more than that. There are millions of Zimbabweans in this country. We are
on the ground. We see them, we know where they work, their own businesses, they
are in our schools,” she said.
On healthcare,
Dabula clarified that Operation Dudula was not calling for a blanket denial of
treatment to all migrants, but for foreign nationals to pay for the healthcare
services. IOL
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