Officials let down raped refugee

She was left pregnant, homeless, friendless and destitute after a rape. But she had not yet met South Africa's refugee officials.

Cape Town High Court Acting Judge Melanie Holderness said last week the Cape Town Refugee Office manager, officials and Home Affairs had been instrumental in a mental breakdown that put the woman in hospital in July, six years after she applied for asylum.

Holderness said the refugee status determination officer, Shadrack Diamond, failed to give the woman a fair hearing. And the standing committee for refugee affairs, to which she appealed, "appears to have been nothing more than a rubber-stamping" of Diamond's decision.

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The judge overturned the decision to deny asylum to the woman and her daughter, now eight, and granted them refugee status.

"The respondents have demonstrated incompetence and insensitivity and it would be unfair to subject her to a fresh process presided over by them," she said.

The 25-year-old woman, who was represented by the University of Cape Town Refugee Rights Clinic, told Holderness she was raped by two intelligence agents from President Joseph Kabila's government early in 2009 and she fled the DRC.