A Home Affairs employee went to the ends of the earth on a hunch he had about a `refugee’, reports Marion Edmunds
Home Affairs official Jaco Duckitt is a man of initiative. In a bid to do his duty and uphold the law, he flew to Tanzania this year to establish the identity of man he suspected was masquerading as a Rwandan refugee and bribed his Tanzanian counterparts to help him with the search.
Duckitt, who heads the Refugee Department at Home Affairs in Cape Town, said it had all started two years ago when a man claiming to be Rwandan applied for political asylum.
Thomas Kaibinda Muhire (22), said he had fled from Rwanda in 1994, and travelled to South Africa via Zaire, Zambia and Namibia in an empty petrol container.
He arrived in South Africa in July 1994 and was given a temporary permit for political asylum by Home Affairs.
He then got a job at Waltons Stationery Company, enrolled for an engineering degree at a local technical college and started to put down roots.
Duckitt, however, said he was sure all along Muhire was lying and he was in fact an illegal immigrant from Tanzania, chancing his luck.
“I just knew, things he said and did, experience told me,” said Duckitt. Possibly on Duckitt’s recommendation, the Refugee Board turned down Muhire’s application and told him to leave the country.
Muhire went to court to appeal against the ruling and was represented by attorney William Kerfoot of the Legal Resources Centre, who was convinced he was Rwandan. The court set aside the Refugee Board’s ruling and called for Home Affairs to give reasons the application had been rejected.
At this point, Duckitt realised gut instinct would not be enough to prove the point before the judge and fearing the case might be lost, decided to venture further afield to find hard evidence.
He set off in July, and got a friend to meet him at the airport. His friend became his guide and aide in a long journey around Arusha to find the Muhire family. During this search, he found he had to grease the palm of many government officials.
“In Tanzania you cannot get anything done with government officials,” Duckitt said with big, surprised eyes this week. “You have to bribe them for any little thing … the guy I was with said to me, you either pay or the guys won’t talk to you. I had to pay about $100 in bribes. I gave my friend my money and he was flashing it about here and there.”
Shortly after arriving in Tanzania, Duckitt realised that he would not be able to trace Muhire through the government’s records. The key to the quest would be a photograph of the man in question.
The Tanzanian officials and a number of other friends Duckitt made during the week in the streets of Arusha advised him to start looking for the man’s friends and family at soccer matches over the weekend. That Sunday Duckitt did a tour of the soccer teams with the photograph, and on the third team he hit jackpot — one of the players recognized Muhire from the picture and told him where the family lived.
Duckitt and his friend spent a day hunting the family down and by nightfall had located them, in a little village, not far from the city. The family recognised the picture of their son, and they were, according to Duckitt, really angry that he was masquerading as a refugee in South Africa.
“His mother must have blown six or seven gaskets when she found out. She was very angry because he had promised to send her money and he had sent nothing. They had not seen him for about three years,” he said.
Duckitt took statements and further photographs of the family, and of pictures of the prodigal son that were hanging in the house, and then made his way back to Cape Town where he promptly arrested Muhire.
Muhire called upon Kerfoot for aid, but after two hours broke down and confessed to him that he was in fact, Tanzanian. He was repatriated shortly afterwards.
It was a triumphant day for Duckitt — the offical who had gone the extra miles off his own bat on a matter of principle. The victory was particularly sweet because he is regularly taken to court by lawyers protesting against rulings on refugees. Duckitt said that 20% of all applications for refugee status contain fictional information.
“I know there are night schools in Cape Town which school people on how to be a refugee and how to answer the questions they know I will put to them.
“When we get six or seven people who come to me at once, and they were all born in the same place, have travelled on the same vehicle, same plane, same seat even … then we know that they are lying and have been told what to say.”