South Africa Cannot Accept Mystery Plane Arrivals from Gaza - Compassion Without Control Is Chaos

Gift of the Givers essentially bullied government officials into admitting passengers who had not been screened, vetted, or correctly documented.

Written by: Kamohelo Chauke

South Africans are compassionate people. Our national identity is shaped by a history of struggle, solidarity, and moral courage. We know what it means to be displaced, marginalised, and endangered, and we often extend that empathy toward those suffering beyond our borders. But compassion, when detached from responsibility, becomes dangerous. Compassion without control becomes chaos. And what unfolded at OR Tambo International Airport on 29 October and again on 13 November 2025 revealed just how unprepared South Africa is for the geopolitical manipulations and emotional pressure that now accompany the Israel Gaza war.

Two charter flights carrying Palestinians from Gaza landed in Johannesburg with almost no warning, no clear documentation, no formal refugee process, and no verified information about who exactly was on board. Instead of arriving through the established asylum system, these passengers simply appeared on the runway, thrust into the hands of overwhelmed Border Management Authority officials, and ultimately admitted into South Africa after pressure from Gift of the Givers. The scenes were chaotic, messy, and deeply concerning for any state that takes its border integrity seriously.

The flight on 13 November, a charter carrying 153 passengers exposed the full extent of this breakdown. Officials immediately noted that many people had no departure stamps, no clear travel routes, and no stated place of residence or intended length of stay in South Africa. Under normal circumstances, this would have resulted in instant denial of entry. Yet after Gift of the Givers intervened and promised to “accommodate” the arrivals, the state buckled. One hundred and thirty passengers were granted 90 day visas despite incomplete paperwork, while 23 others were reportedly moved elsewhere under circumstances that remain murky.

The earlier October flight, which reportedly carried 176 people, followed the same troubling pattern: no pre-screening, no coordination with Home Affairs, and no clarity about how these flights were organised or who authorised them. This is not how a responsible state operates. This is not how South Africa, already battling porous borders and an overwhelmed asylum system, should be managing international arrivals from one of the world’s most unstable conflict zones.

The Fabricated “Stamp” Narrative and Why It Matters

Compounding this crisis was the intervention of Imtiaz Sooliman, head of Gift of the Givers, who publicly claimed that the passengers arrived with “no stamps because Israel does not stamp Palestinian passports and sent them to South Africa to be further displaced because they are being ethnically cleansed.” This statement was misleading at best and deliberately inflammatory at worst.

Israel does not issue Palestinian passports and therefore does not stamp them. Palestinians travel on their own Palestinian Authority passports, and when exiting through Israel in controlled circumstances, Israel typically does not stamp passports, any passport, not because of discrimination, but because countries blacklist anyone whose passport shows an Israeli stamp. Instead, Israel issues separate paper slips containing the person’s visa/information, identity number, and visit details. This system is designed to protect travellers, not to obscure their routes.

Soliman’s claim, then, was a distortion of Israeli passport stamps which is normal, known, and easily explained with the far more serious problem: these passengers had no verified exit documentation from any authority, including Egypt, the only other possible transit state. This is an entirely different issue. Israel’s stamp policy does not account for missing travel records, unverified identities, or unexplained flight manifests. The absence of stamps was not an Israeli conspiracy; it was evidence of a deeply irregular, possibly unlawful evacuation process.

Sooliman framed this irregularity as a moral outrage rather than what it truly was: a breach of international immigration norms. Instead of clarifying the situation for South Africans, he inflamed public sentiment, creating pressure on Home Affairs and Border Management to waive standard immigration protocols. In effect, he helped remove the state’s ability to act in the national interest.

When NGOs Bully the State, the State Loses Authority

This episode exposed a dangerous new phenomenon in South Africa: NGOs exercising political power by leveraging emotional narratives and public symbolism to override state processes. Gift of the Givers, respected for its humanitarian work, essentially bullied government officials into admitting passengers who had not been screened, vetted, or correctly documented.

An NGO has no mandate to make immigration decisions. It cannot verify identities, conduct background checks, or ensure that individuals entering the country pose no security risk. By allowing Gift of the Givers to dictate who may enter the Republic, South Africa effectively ceded a portion of state sovereignty to a private organisation whose authority is derived from public sentiment rather than law.

This is not humanitarianism. This is the erosion of state authority.

Why This Matters and Why South Africans Should Be Concerned

The issue is not whether Palestinians deserve sympathy. They do. The issue is whether a country with South Africa’s fragile institutions can responsibly accept unvetted arrivals organised outside diplomatic channels. South Africa is not a wealthy state with robust intelligence capacities like Germany or Canada. We already struggle with an overstretched asylum system, corruption within Home Affairs, undocumented migration, and weak enforcement mechanisms. Introducing undocumented arrivals from a conflict zone where Hamas operates from within civilian areas is not merely unwise, it is reckless.

Accepting such arrivals creates a dangerous shortcut around the asylum system. Ordinary asylum seekers from the DRC, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zimbabwe wait months or years to be processed. Yet these charter-plane passengers bypassed everything, entering South Africa through a humanitarian loophole created by political pressure and NGO activism. If this becomes a precedent, South Africa will be viewed as an easy target for irregular evacuations, political agenda flights, and exploited humanitarian routes.

The Arab World’s Silence Speaks Volumes

South Africans must also confront a sobering reality: the Arab countries closest to Gaza such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE have categorically refused to accept mass Palestinian arrivals. Their reasons are clear and deeply rooted in history. They worry about militants entering disguised as civilians. They worry that accepting Palestinians en masse may erase their political claim to return. They worry about social destabilisation and the risk of importing Gaza’s internal factions.

These are not excuses; they are lessons. If governments with far greater capacity, closeness and cultural capacity than ours are cautious, why is South Africa acting with unthinking haste?

Solidarity Requires Responsibility, not Recklessness

South Africa’s solidarity with Palestine is often invoked to justify decisions that undermine our own national interests. But solidarity does not mean blind acceptance of irregular arrivals. It does not require abandoning border controls, ignoring documentation irregularities, or outsourcing immigration authority to NGOs. We can support the Palestinian people while insisting on lawful, orderly, and secure processes. Those positions are not contradictory, they are complementary.

South Africa Must Act Now

What is now required is not sentiment but structure. Government must take back control of its borders, implement strict protocols for any future charter flights, enforce mandatory vetting for all arrivals from conflict zones, and ensure that NGOs support rather than override the state. South Africans deserve transparent communication about who is entering the country, under what legal status, how long they will stay, and what screening has been done. One would even ask in this situation, was the Nkandla - Gupta plane well to lend for the wedding because the president said yes? Is Sooliman now the 2025 president of planes?

Compassion Does Not Mean Chaos

South Africa can be both compassionate and responsible. What we cannot be is reckless. The events at OR Tambo were a warning: if we allow emotional politics and NGO pressure to replace immigration law, we will compromise our national security, destabilise our refugee system, and undermine public trust. A country without borders is not a country. And solidarity without responsibility is not solidarity, it is self-sabotage.

Kamohelo Chauke is a community and student activist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he has held multiple leadership positions, including serving as a Student Representative Council (SRC) member from 2021 to 2023.