Home Affairs faces challenge to refugee fines policy (West Cape News)

Faced with the August 12 expiry of his Section 22 asylum seekers permit which has to be renewed every three months, Zimbabwean Kholwani Ngwenya, 31, went to the Cape Town Refugee Reception office on August 10. But a month later Ngwenya still hasn’t got to the front of the queue at the Maitland Home Affairs office despite returning by 6am every morning. And he is afraid that when he does get to the official’s desk, he will face a R2.500 fine because his permit has expired.

 

He said on August 18 he said he watched two Zimbabwean women crying after they were each fined R2,500 for not renewing their permits before their expiry dates. “They cried that day,” said Ngwenya. And to add salt to the wound, their expired documents were held by Home Affairs and a renewal would not be forthcoming before they had paid what, for desperate and mostly unemployed asylum seekers, is an exorbitant fine.It is this violation of the “basic human rights” afforded to asylum seekers and refugees under South Africa’s refugee agreements that has led the University of Cape Town’s Law Clinic to issue a letter of demand to Home Affairs urging them to reconsider this practice. Law Clinic attorney James Chapman said before May thousands of asylum seekers and refugees were being fined even though they were one day late and some of them had permits that might have expired on a Sunday.

 

Submissions from the Law Clinic to Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma had halted this, but hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees were still being fined for being more than a day late even if it was due to waiting for days in queues. Asylum seekers in possession of a Section 22 permit had to renew them every three or six months, while those with Section 24 permits granting refugee status, had to have them renewed every two years.

 

He said in terms of legislation Home Affairs was allowed to issue fines for late renewal, but the fact that late renewal was often not the fault of the permit holder, that Home Affairs withheld documentation until fines were paid and that the fines were unreasonably large meant the fundamental rights due to foreign nationals were being prejudiced. “If the foreign nationals don’t pay the R2,500 they have to wait for a court date which takes months to come, if you pay the R2,500 you are admitting guilt and only then you can get you your permit back.”

In the meantime they had no documentation which left them vulnerable to arrest or exploitation.“They can be detained. They won’t be able to go to school. They can’t access their bank accounts. They can’t pay rent. It affects their work. All their basic core rights are prejudiced.

He said if the minister did not respond to the Law Clinic’s submission they would launch an urgent application in the Western Cape High Court to declare the procedure “unlawful and unconstitutional”.

 

Meanwhile David Cote, strategic litigation unit coordinator at Lawyers for Human Rights in Johannesburg, said they are investigating the legality and basis for the Home Affairs fines to determine whether they were reasonable. “There is large cost implication for people. We have received a lot of complaints…. It’s actually a major issue,” said Cote.

 

Home Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said he would only respond to questions sent by email. There was no reply from his office before going to press and repeated phone calls went unanswered. — Peter Luhanga, West Cape News