South Africa will resume the deportation of undocumented Zimbabweans on January 1st 2011, ending its 17-month moratorium, the Cabinet has announced.
“After the 31st of December [2010] all undocumented Zimbabweans will be treated like all others and their deportation will resume,” said a statement issued after the Cabinet met.
In April 2009 the government placed a moratorium on deportations, introduced a 90-day visa on demand for passport holders, and was on the cusp of issuing Zimbabweans with a special permit allowing them to work and reside in South Africa for between 6 months and 3 years.
The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (FMSP) estimates that between 1 million and 1.5 million Zimbabweans are living in South Africa.
Loren Landau, director of FMSP, told IRIN that deportation “does not stop people wanting to come across [the border from neighboring Zimbabwe]. Look at the US-Mexico border, where billions of dollars have been spent; it has not stopped people crossing.”
NGOs advocating the reform of regional migration were scheduled to meet with government next week, but since the announcement they have raised concerns to IRIN that the policy was retrogressive, increased the risks of xenophobic attacks, and would not halt the flow of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants – about 200,000 Zimbabweans were deported in the year leading up to the April 2009 moratorium.
Duncan Breen, of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CORMSA), said ahead of the meeting with government that the authorities had “concerns with border migration and border management … and border integrity”.
Braam Hanekom, of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), told IRIN that Cabinet’s statement was “a big step backwards”, the vulnerability of undocumented migrants would increase, and the “country has a history of [undocumented] migrants being raped and abused, but too afraid to report it to the police for fear of being deported.”
PASSOP said in a statement: “We believe that the large number of deportations and the proceeding ‘witch hunt’ of foreign nationals by the National Immigration Branch and South African Police were a major factor in creating the conditions that lead to the culture of xenophobia that haunts us today.”
South Africa experienced wide-scale xenophobia in May 2008, when at least 60 people were killed and more than 100,000 displaced, and an undercurrent of xenophobic violence sometimes still surfaces as threats or attacks on foreigners.
Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
SOUTH AFRICA : Deportation of Zimbabweans to begin again
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