“I really need to go back to South Africa,” said Thuli Ngwenya,* with a hint of desperation in her voice.
“Although I want to come back and live in Zimbabwe there are no jobs available for me to support my family.”
For the past eight years Johannesburg’s Berea has been home to the 25-year-old, her three children and her long-time partner. But for the past few weeks she’s been in Bulawayo trying to get a passport.
Ngwenya is one of the many Zimbabwean nationals who have been living in South Africa illegally — the International Organisation for Migration estimates that between 1,5-million and two million Zimbabwean nationals live in the country. But a regularisation process by the South African department of home affairs has seen her join fellow countrymen on a journey back home.
It has not been plain sailing. She endured long queues to submit applications and paid high costs, always setting aside a “little something” for officers at the passport office to help speed up her application.
The looming December 31 deadline for Zimbabwe nationals to regularise their stay or face deportation adds to her anxiety, which is growing with each day that passes without papers.
A Zimbabwean passport is required by South African authorities to process work, study and business permits and Ngwenya, like many others, doesn’t have one.
Or even a birth certificate for that matter. Her parents died when she was an adolescent and her grandmother, who raised her in a rural community outside Bulawayo, never thought that paperwork was important.
A better chance
Reports from Zimbabwe’s Johannesburg consulate have indicated that 40 000 passports have been processed so far. But Ngwenya has misgivings about passport applications made in South Africa.
“It’s a waste of time applying for a passport while in South Africa because it won’t come out,” she said. “At least here there is a chance, a very good chance, that it will be processed.”
It was a “chance” that cost her $250 for an emergency passport that would normally take 24 hours to process, but now takes two weeks, reportedly because of the large number of applications.
Ngwenya applied for a passport for herself and her youngest child in the gold-mining town of Gwanda, about 150km from Bulawayo.
Since the Zimbabwean government slashed passport prices from $150 to $50 in August, small towns have seen a boom in what one passport officer described as “city people” making applications there.
It’s a situation that would surprise many applicants who queue for days on end outside Harare’s busy Makombe building and Bulawayo’s passport office, where those who queue overnight are regularly involved in running battles with the police. But not every Zimbabwean illegally living in South Africa appears to be keen on pursuing his or her dreams in Egoli, as the increasing sight of 4×4 vehicles laden with fridges, stoves, beds, sofas and other property suggests.
“People are now coming back home”, said Crispen Nhare (40), a cross-border trader who plies the Bulawayo-Johannesburg route twice a week.
“No one sends all their property if they are simply planning on spending Christmas with their family. Since last month I’ve been transporting people’s property from South Africa. Most people are choosing to send across whatever they own now than risk losing it all when deportations start.” But Ngwenya, who is a domestic worker, is determined to get back to Berea, even if she must rely on “a bit of insurance” — her “legitimate” South African ID book obtained for her by a man in Mpumalanga several years ago for R1 000.
“I have heard about the amnesty we have been given to hand over fake documents but, to be honest, I’ll only do so when I have sorted out all my papers,” she said. “I can’t risk getting deported and my family goes hungry.”
*Not her real name