"They were later picked up along with seven other young men by South African police. Police said two were in a car involved in a high-speed chase. A 47-year-old Ethiopian man was arrested and charged with kidnapping and failing to stop when police instructed him to. The 12 men, originally thought to be teenagers but said by police to be 22 to 33, were charged with being in South Africa illegally."
"The UN's International Organization for Migration estimated in 2024 that as many as 200,000 Ethiopians live in South Africa. Yordanos Estifanos, who has researched the southern route from Ethiopia to South Africa, said his educated guess was that tens of thousands arrived each year. Ethiopians have been migrating to South Africa since Nelson Mandela opened the country up to other Africans when he became president in 1994 at the end of apartheid, a few years after the brutal Derg junta that ruled Ethiopia was overthrown."
On 5 January five young men dressed only in underwear were seen in Mulbarton and later detained along with seven others. Police said two men had been in a car involved in a high-speed chase and a 47-year-old Ethiopian was arrested on kidnapping and failing-to-stop charges. The 12 men, described by police as aged 22 to 33, were charged with being in South Africa illegally. Reports say groups of young Ethiopian men and boys have escaped suburban houses in Johannesburg where they were allegedly locked up while smugglers demanded ransom from relatives. Estimates put the Ethiopian population in South Africa as high as 200,000, driven by economic opportunity and political repression since the end of apartheid.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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