Levi Mukarati, Senior Political Reporter
ZIMBABWEANS in South Africa without proper documentation should regularise their stay, or face imminent deportation, a Cabinet minister warned yesterday. Last week Pretoria announced it had decided to stop allowing Zimbabweans to stay in South Africa without proper travel documents.
The South African cabinet said the decision was taken in order to legitimatise the estimated three million Zimbabweans living in that country illegally, the bulk of which hold fraudulently acquired identity documents. Those without proper documentation would be given time to obtain passports, work or study permits, as well as other documents that would permit them to be in the country legitimately.
Yesterday Kembo Mohadi, one of the two co-ministers of Home Affairs, said affected Zimbabweans should take heed of the South African set deadline or risked being sent back home. Mohadi hinted the government would not seek an extension of the special dispensation negotiated by Harare and Pretoria to allow them free movement without requiring a permit.
“We engaged our South African counterparts in April last year when we negotiated for the removal of VISA requirements. We were given six months to regularise all people in South Africa and we negotiated further to 31st December 2010,” said Mohadi.
“It is now up to us to send people to South Africa so that they (Zimbabweans) are given the requisite travel documents. Those who choose not to meet the deadline face deportation,” he said.
The South African authorities argue that some form of stability had returned to Zimbabwe to guarantee the safety back home of foreign nationals, an assertion opposed by civil society organisations in that country.
Gabriel Shumba, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, slammed South Africa’s decision as callous and arbitrary, claiming it was in violation of the Bilateral Agreement signed between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Shumba, who is in self-imposed exile in South Africa, said Zimbabweans “could be excused to think that the so-called deal was a scheme designed to hoodwink them as to the real purpose of it: to obtain cheap labour from Zimbabwe before the World Cup.
“More poignant is the fact that the resumption of deportations is announced before any adequate measures are put in place to ensure that the asylum seeking process has been made more accessible, and before the special permit has been put in place.”
The latest development comes after the United Kingdom government last week sent a fact finding mission to Zimbabwe to ascertain whether it was safe to resume the deportation of thousands of asylum seekers there.
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