Marion Edmunds
REFUGEE monitors and a few senior Home Affairs officials are lobbying for another amnesty for illegal immigrants – possibly for Mozambicans only – after last year’s asylum offer reached fewer people than had been hoped.
Only 200 000 illegal immigrants and refugees from Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries applied for amnesty, and nearly half of them had their applications for permanent residence turned down.
Maxine Reitzes and Nigel Crawhall, who evaluated the amnesty for a study commissioned by the Southern African migration project of Idasa, indicated that the numbers of applicants fell far short of the Home Affairs Department’s expectations.
“If we look at 204 000 out of a million [refugees], then we can say that the initiative only convinced 20% of potential applicants. This would appear to be a failure because it leaves a further 80% in a continuing and unnecessary illegal situation.
“If the real number of possible applicants was 500 000, then Home Affairs can claim a 40% success rate, a major improvement but still begging the question of what happened to all the others.”
Of the 11 SADC nationalities which applied for amnesty, Mozambicans came in with far the largest number, with more than 146 672 pitching for permanent residence. Just under 50% were rejected.
Zimbabweans and Malawians fared comparatively better with 67% of Zimbabwean applications approved and 68% of Malawian applicants getting permanent residence.
While the state has received credit for pioneering the amnesty, there has been wide-ranging criticism about the confusion it initially inspired – politically and logistically – and its implementation.
There is also a fear that Home Affairs will use the data it has collected to arrest and deport those who were rejected and whose temporary permits have now expired.
The Black Sash has complained that rejected applicants were not provided with reasons why they were turned down, making it difficult for them to appeal against the decision, made in many cases by officials, some of them temporary workers with little expertise, brought in to handle the amnesty queues.
Reitzes and Crawhall recommend that Home Affairs upgrade its research on immigration issues, that it co-ordinate better with relevant departments, such as Foreign Affairs, non-governmental organisations and immigrant groups, and that corrupt Home Affairs officials be rooted out and penalised.
Nicola Johnston, the co-ordinator of the Wits Rural Refugee Programme in Mpumalanga, said she was lobbying Home Affairs for another amnesty because there were still hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans, many of whom had lived in Mpumalanga for 10 and 15 years, who had not been able to take up the amnesty.
“It was too expensive for many to travel to the local Home Affairs office to make the applications. There were also hidden costs of corruption, which made it difficult for them. Headmen, for example, were charging about R19 for a referral letter stating how long the person had been in the country, clerks were demanding R6 to take fingerprints, and people were having to pay R20 to clerks to speed up their applications.”
Johnston estimates there are about 300 000 Mozambican refugees around Bushbuckridge who did not apply. Of the 36 268 who applied for the amnesty in Nelspruit, only 10 000 applications were approved.
Johnston said she had picked up – through discussions with Home Affairs officials – that some government officials saw the project as a useful way to isolate the criminal element within the illegal alien community.
The Home Affairs Department had not responded to questions at the time of going to print.