GOVERNMENT is in discussions with South Africa over the fate its citizens in the neighbouring country facing deportation after the expiry of their permits.
Early this week, South Africa’s Home Affairs minister, Leon Schreiber, told that country’s Parliament that Pretoria spent R53 817 656 deporting undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom are Zimbabweans.
Of the 19 750 deported undocumented immigrants, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo were the majority.
Pretoria has warned Zimbabwean immigrants and those from other countries to regularise their stay or face deportation.
There are an estimated 180 000 Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) holders in South Africa.
Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said the government was engaging Pretoria over the planned deportations of undocumented citizens.
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“South Africa has its own laws that govern their own immigration. What we can do as a government is to ensure that the needs of our people, wherever possible, are governed by the bilateral relations that we have, that we can assist them,” Ziyambi said in the Senate on Wednesday.
“The issue of Zimbabweans in South Africa is that the South African government has decided that they no longer want to renew the permits that were given after 2008, they said that they wanted to remove them.”
ZEP was introduced in 2009 as a temporary solution to a growing refugee crisis related to Zimbabwe.
Pretoria has indicated plans not to renew the permits.
In February this year, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed an application by then Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi to appeal a Pretoria High Court judgment declaring the ZEP programme to be unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.
Ziyambi added: “So, we wait to see whether the South Africans will be amenable to negotiating to have our people who have been staying there stay but are within the jurisdiction of the South African Government.
“We have held negotiations, but it is something that is not very easy to tell the government to say, you must take our citizens and give them work; however, diplomatic and bilateral discussions between our Foreign Affairs ministry and their department of International Relations are on-going.”
South Africa is a destination of choice for Zimbabweans and other African immigrants fleeing war, hunger and poverty in their home countries.