South Africa Evacuation: We Deserve Praise Despite Errors In 15 Of 1,964 Records – High Commissioner
Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Benjamin Quashie, has defended the team responsible for evacuating Ghanaians fleeing xenophobic attacks in the country, saying the 15 errors identified in the records of 1,964 evacuees should not overshadow the team’s efforts.
The errors came to light after the Ghana High Commission in Pretoria acknowledged clerical mistakes in the records of 15 evacuees, following a data analysis that raised concerns about the payment of reintegration and transportation allowances to individuals whose recorded dates of birth appeared to be in the future.
Speaking in an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, Mr Quashie said the mistakes occurred amid intense pressure to organise the evacuation and ensure the safe return of affected Ghanaians.
“If out of 1,964 and we’ve made errors in just 15 names, I think that we deserve a pat on the back, especially with the kind of pressure we had and how we had to quickly improvise and ensure that there was value for money,” he said.
“We had to quickly work around the clock to get them out of harm’s way and get them into Ghana,” he added.
Addressing concerns about discrepancies in the evacuation records, Mr Quashie denied that the High Commission had misrepresented information to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He explained that the information submitted to the ministry had been provided by South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA), which conducts the final screening of evacuees at the airport before they board their flights.
He said three agencies were involved in the process: South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, the BMA and the Ghana High Commission.
Mr Quashie explained that after screening the evacuees, the BMA provided the High Commission with documents containing their names, passport numbers, dates of birth and other personal details.
The documents, known as body receipts, were supplied in PDF format and could not be edited by the High Commission, he said.
He added that officials later discovered clerical errors involving the transposition of dates in some passport records, particularly dates of birth and passport expiry dates.
According to him, the High Commission contacted the BMA after identifying the discrepancies, and the authority indicated that it had corrected the errors on its end.
“The information that we had is what we gave to the Ministry, and sincerely and fairly, the Ministry only spoke to the document that we sent to them. And that document came from the Border Management Authority of South Africa,” he said.
Mr Quashie maintained that the High Commission could not alter the original documents supplied by the South African authority. He nevertheless accepted responsibility for the errors identified in the records, saying the High Commission had raised the matter with the BMA.
The evacuation exercise was organised to bring Ghanaians caught up in xenophobic attacks in South Africa back to safety.
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