Temporary Residents Permit on the Horizon

Almost a decade into the Zimbabwean crisis, South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs is introducing a permit that could regularize the status of thousands of undocumented migrants and put an end to mass deportations as a first step to a long-awaited new policy on a thorny issue.(from IRIN)

The permit will grant thousands of Zimbabweans the right to live and work in South Africa, and access healthcare and education for an initial period of at least six months. The mass deportation of undocumented migrants may be halted.

South Africa has never formally addressed the influx of tens of thousands Zimbabweans over its northern border, and standard immigration measures left many undocumented, so seeking asylum has often been the only way for them to regularize their status.

Zimbabwe’s economic collapse and political crisis is a decade old, but until 2004 many Zimbabweans were barred from applying for asylum. According to the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), they form the bulk of applications, creating a backlog of almost 90,000 in 2007.

“Up to 80 percent of these applications are rejected on the basis that the applicants do not meet the requirements of the Refugee Act,” Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy told IRIN.

“As it currently stands, the Immigration Act does not accommodate economic migrants. Given the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, it was agreed that the government cannot continue to send Zimbabweans who do not qualify for refugee status, or any other permit, back home.”

The idea of such a permit as a solution to the large number of asylum seekers is not new. Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula first mentioned it in 2007.

There are widespread misperceptions in South Africa about foreigners’ contribution to crime and unemployment, and such a policy change could be a political hot potato in an election year.

“We’re a little bemused by the timing of it,” said Loren Landau, director of the Forced Migration Studies Programme, which has long advocated the permit. “In some ways seems like exactly the wrong time … [but] my guess is that the minister wants some kind of legacy around this issue, realizing that they haven’t dealt with it in the past.”

South Africa’s approach has been largely one of “arrest, detain, deport”, in which undocumented individuals were arrested by the police and detained in repatriation centres before being deported at state expense.

“We’re looking at reports of rape, killings, trafficking, abuse of women, but it continues. [The new permit is] a clear turning point in South Africa, which up until now has had a line that there is no problem in Zimbabwe.”

Zim refugees moved from pillar to post

The Methodist Church, in the city centre, has long been a popular destination for thousands of Zimbabweans fleeing their country's political and economic woes and more recently a devastating cholera crisis. (from IOL)

The sheer numbers of refugees spilling out of the church as government closed down a camp in the border town of Musina, has now led local politicians to home in on the church for contravening city bylaws.