South Africa May Deport 1.2 Million Zimbabweans (Bloomberg News)

South Africa may start deporting more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans in April after they missed a deadline to legalize their residency, Lawyers For Human Rights said. Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalize their residency before the Dec. 31 deadline, South Africa's government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A "conservative" estimate by Johannesburg's University of The Witwatersrand is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa, Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, the head of the refugee and migrant rights program for Lawyers for Human Rights, said.

"This leaves a very significant number of people unprotected," she said in an interview from Johannesburg today. After the applications have been adjudicated by about April, deportations are likely to begin, she said, adding that the group has lobbied unsuccessfully for the deadline to be extended.

Zimbabweans started flooding into neighboring South Africa following the collapse of their economy and an upsurge in political violence sparked by President Robert Mugabe's policies of forcibly acquiring mainly white-owned commercial farms, which began in 2000, and a series of violent elections.

Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party has ruled the country in coalition with the Movement for Democratic Change since February 2009 and elections are due to take place this year.

"Those who have not applied deliberately took the decision not to regularize their status and will have to bear the consequences,"

Ronnie Mamoepa, a spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs, said today by phone from the capital, Pretoria. "We must now adjudicate the applications."

'Arrest and Deportation'

Lines of as long as 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) formed outside some Home Affairs offices in Johannesburg last week as Zimbabweans tried to get registered, Business Day newspaper reported on Dec. 29.

"The Department of Home Affairs has informed us that while applications are being processed there will be no deportations, however these persons will be vulnerable to arrest and deportation in the near future," Ramjathan-Keogh said in a separate statement on Dec. 29.

Many Zimbabweans in South Africa are not eligible for residency permits because they are unemployed or have part-time jobs, according to Braam Hanekom, director of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty, an organization that aims to assist immigrants.

Job Competition

The presence of foreign migrants has sparked resentment among South Africa's poor who view them as competitors for jobs and housing.

Xenophobic violence in May 2008 claimed more than 60 lives and drove thousands from their homes.

South Africa's government in September rescinded an April 2009 decision not to deport illegal Zimbabwean immigrants and gave them until the end of the year to request work or business permits, student visas or refugee status. Applicants had to show proof that they had applied for a Zimbabwean passport.

"The Zimbabwean authorities have been very slow to cooperate,"

Hanekom said by phone today from Cape Town. "None of the Zimbabweans down here in South Africa are likely to vote for Mugabe, so denying them passports" is in his interest.

The Zimbabwean government rejected an offer of a passport- making machine that would have helped produce the documentation, said Theresa Makone, Zimbabwe's joint home affairs minister and a member of the MDC.

Chased, Killed

"It is regrettable that the offer was turned down by the registrar general's office," she said today in telephone interview from Harare, the capital. "They cited security concerns, but what those concerns are requires further investigation."

Tobias Mudede, Zimbabwe's registrar general, did not answer three calls to his office in Harare. Zimbabwean human rights organizations Sokwanele and the Zimbabwe Election Support Network have accused Mudede of bias toward Mugabe's party.

"The situation is desperate," said Nixon Kaseke, who sells Zimbabwean art along South Africa's east coast with his brother Brezhnev. "We have no papers for South Africa, but business here supports our families back home, where there is no business and no tourists to buy art."

The brothers, who operate from the back of a pickup truck outside shopping malls, plan to remain in South Africa until they are deported.

With South Africa's current unemployment rate at 25.3 percent, the highest of 62 countries tracked by Bloomberg, the continued presence of illegal migrants may spell more unrest.

"There is no work here, why should we welcome foreigners?"

Siyabonga Tshabeni, a part-time gardener in Scottburgh, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the eastern port city of Durban, said in an interview today. "If the government doesn't chase them way, we will chase them away and some will be killed."

South Africa May Deport 1.2 Million Zimbabweans, Human Rights Lawyers Say By Brian Latham and Mike Cohen - Jan 3, 2011 4:23 PM GMT+0200 Bloomberg News

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Latham in Durban at blatham [at] bloomberg [dot] net (blatham [at] bloomberg [dot] net); Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21 [at] bloomberg [dot] net (mcohen21 [at] bloomberg [dot] net).

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Sanders in London at psanders [at] bloomberg [dot] net (psanders [at] bloomberg [dot] net).