ZIMBABWE DOCUMENTATION PROCESS: HOME AFFAIRS REMAINS RESOLUTE ON REFUSAL TO EXTEND DEADLINE

 

There are fewer than 3 days remaining for Zimbabweans to be able to lodge applications for permits with the DHA. The deadline for Zimbabweans to apply for relevant work, business or study permits has still not been extended, despite acknowledgments by Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that there is a massive backlog of applications. Applying for and receiving the permits depends entirely on having the right identification, but Zimbabwe's Home Affairs department has only been able to process less than ten thousand passports in recent weeks. After interventions by the Public Protector’s Office, DHA made certain concessions which allowed Zimbabweans who did not have in their possession all of the required documents to be able to lodge their applications before the cut off date with the understanding that they could supplement these applications during the course of 2011.

 

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has been lobbying DHA for an extension of the deadline since September. The Minister of Home Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has repeatedly confirmed however that there will be no extension of the 31 December deadline. No reasonable explanation for this decision has been officially issued.

 

LHR believes that there are at least 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa, yet at the 15^th December only 116 000 applications for permits had been received by DHA. Of those applications only an estimated 27 000 have been approved since the documentation process was launched in September. LHR has indications that about 10 000 applications have been rejected and about 79 000 are still being adjudicated. The Zimbabwean authorities have received about 46 000 applications for passports and they are struggling to process these. At mid-December they had a backlog of about 36 000 applications. DHA has blamed the huge backlog on the South African side on the Zimbabwean authorities’ inability to issue passports before the deadline. They have only been able to issue 500 passports a day.

 

Reports of problems in applying for permits persist. In one incident in Tshwane, LHR was informed that officials tore up the affidavits and supporting documentation submitted by applicants whose only choice is to return and try again.   These incidents have been brought to the attention of senior DHA officials. 

In any event, LHR and other stakeholders were only informed two weeks ago of the relaxed requirements for these particular permits. Even DHA officials have said that such information has not been communicated to them. The new requirements are only now filtering down to desperate applicants and those who were previously turned away. 

 

The intention behind this process has reportedly been to regularise the immigration status of thousands of Zimbabweans who were in the country. These persons were either undocumented, on asylum permits or in possession of fraudulent South African documents.   According to Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, head of Lawyers for Human Rights’ Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme, “The inability of the Zimbabwe Documentation process to reach significant numbers of Zimbabweans means that these persons will be obliged to revert to whatever means is available for them to document themselves even if these are not entirely legal means. Surely this could never have been the intention behind the regularisation process?” Ramjathan-Keogh continues, “DHA 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”.

 

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