South Africa has offered Zimbabwe the use of its state-of-the-art passport printing press that has capacity to process 4 000 passports per hour ahead of the December 31 deadline set for Zimbabweans living in South Africa to regularise their stay.
This is according to a report in Thursday’s edition of the Zimbabwe Herald newspaper.
The report said the offer had been made during a meeting between Home Affairs co-Ministers Kembo Mohadi and Theresa Makone and their South African counterpart Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in South Africa earlier this month.
Also present at the meeting was Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede.
“The home affairs co-ministers immediately tasked Mr Mudede to consider the merits of the offer and submit a report to the ministry for onward transmission to Cabinet for consideration before government could accept or reject the offer.”
Large queues ‘being managed’
Meanwhile, the Department of Home Affairs in South African said on Thursday that large queues were being managed.
“There are big numbers; queues are moving fast,” said Gauteng provincial spokesperson Ronald Ndema.
There had been no operational problems and the department was confident everyone would be attended to, he said.
“It’s a sickness in our country. Even in soccer, if you say the game starts at 4pm, you expect them to be there at three but they come 15 minutes after the game has started.”
In the Western Cape, provincial spokesperson Yusuf Simons said he was helping out at the office.
“We have doubled our staff complement. We’ll help everyone that’s here even if it’s up to midnight tonight,” he said.
Departments in the Northern Cape and Free State however were much quieter.
“It’s going very well,” Free State spokesperson Bonakele Mayekiso said.
“But we don’t have big numbers. There are four people in the queue.”
Comment from the other provinces was not immediately available.
Meanwhile, director general of the Zimbabwe Consulate in South Africa Chris Mapanga could not ascertain the number of people so far registered in South Africa, the Herald reported.
“This registration is a dynamic process and I cannot give the statistics now because every minute we are registering people.
“We have established four centres in Johannesburg and it’s work in progress as we are racing against the deadline,” he was quoted as saying.
The Herald quoted Dlamini-Zuma as saying that about 125 000 applications had been received while more than 40 000 had been processed by December 17.
“She also maintained that the South African government would not extend the December 31 deadline, but would continue to work on the applications until applicants got their permits.”
In September, the government reduced fees for an ordinary passport from $140 to $50 as part of efforts to make sure that Zimbabweans received travel documents.
“Recently, Mr Mudede said of the estimated 3,5-million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, 1,5-million had no legal documents.”
South African authorities, who had allowed many to stay without passports, announced the crackdown in September, saying that those who did not apply for legal status before the deadline would have to go home. – I-Net Bridge, Sapa