Refugees in SA fight for better conditions

22 August 2011 - 00:36 By ANDREW MUBAYIWA
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Zimbabweans stand in a long queue at a Home Affairs office in SA when a deportation deadline loomed. File photo.
Zimbabweans stand in a long queue at a Home Affairs office in SA when a deportation deadline loomed. File photo.
Image: ESA ALEXANDER

A group of asylum- seekers has applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an order directing the Home Affairs ministry to provide adequate refugee reception offices in South Africa, including in Johannesburg.

The order - which, if granted, could force an overhaul of a refugee management system that at times borders on dysfunctional - seeks to compel the ministry to address a host of problems, including rampant corruption and overcrowding at reception offices that have made applying for asylum a nightmare in South Africa.

In a joint application, 74 asylum-seekers and two Johannesburg-based immigrant rights groups want the ministry's failure to set up enough reception offices declared "unlawful and unconstitutional".

Lawyers for Human Rights has filed the application on behalf of the asylum-seekers, the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (Cormsa) and the Coordinating Body of Refugee Communities (CBRC).

SA Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and her director-general, Mkuseli Apleni, are first and second respondents. The director of asylum-seeker management and the officers in charge at Marabastad and the Tshwane Interim Refugee Reception (Tirro) are the other respondents in the matter, which has yet to be set down for hearing.

The ministry had not yet responded to questions on the matter at the time of going to press. The ministry last May closed the Crown Mines refugee reception office that served Johannesburg, which arguably housed the greatest number of immigrants. The office was closed after nearby businesses filed a court application alleging crowds of immigrants that flocked to the office were disturbing their operations.

Following the closure, asylum-seekers from Johannesburg were asked to use the reception offices at Marabastad and Tirro that were already barely able to cope with their own workloads before the addition of tens of thousands more people who used to go to Crown Mines.

This, the applicants say, has led to overcrowding at the two reception offices and, in many cases, it has become virtually impossible for asylum-seekers to get the assistance due to them under the Refugees Act.

The matter first came to court in July this year as two applications by eight asylum applicants who wanted to renew their expired Section 22 permits, also known as asylum-seeker permits, obtained from Crown Mines before its closure. They wanted the ministry ordered to renew the permits after failing to have this done at Tirro because of overcrowding there.

The second group of 66 new applicants for Section 22 permits wanted the ministry directed to grant them immediate access to Marabastad so they could lodge their applications after failing to do so because of congestion at the reception office.

But the court found that it was not in the interests of justice to consider relief for the particular applicants only. It said it preferred hearing evidence of a "class of similarly situated asylum applicants" in order for the systemic problems which had led to the original applications to be considered.

Both applications were postponed so they could be amended into one omnibus application tackling the myriad problems bedevelling the refugee management system and to also allow Cormsa and CRBC to join in the matter. Among other key aspects the applicants want the ministry ordered to do are that it probes corruption at Maraba-stad and Tirro, implements measures to maximise productivity at the two offices and also that it ensures force is not used unnecessarily against asylum applicants.

They also want the ministry ordered to introduce effective queue management systems at reception offices, put up signage stating procedures for applying for asylum, scrap fines for asylum-seekers who failed to renew permits on or after June this year and set up grievance and complaints desks at Marabastad and Tirro.

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now