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South Africa was on Wednesday scheduled to start deporting Zimbabweans who failed to acquire permits under the 2010 Dispensation for Zimbabwe Project.Out of 295,000 applicants, 242,000 Zimbabwean citizens were given the permits. Some 50,000 applications were turned down but we know that thousands of others were too scared to present themselves before immigration officials to regularise their stay in that country.
They chose to remain underground.
The successful 242,000 were afforded another chance from Wednesday to apply for an extension of their stay in South Africa for an additional three years under the second and probably last phase of the special facility exclusively meant for Zimbabweans. Their less fortunate compatriots, whose applications were spiked in 2010 or didn’t apply in the first place, will have to return home voluntarily at their own expense or face deportation at government expense.
South Africa does not have an obligation to accommodate illegal immigrants. No country does. Therefore they are free to flush out undocumented people as they have always done and are intensifying from this week.
But we are unhappy from experience with how the deportations are carried out.
Home Affairs Minister, Cde Kembo Mohadi highlighted the government’s reservations.
“I did indicate to South Africa that the deportations are inhumane, in the first place,” he said on Thursday. “You don’t treat humans like that, round them up from the streets, bundle them in vans to Lindela Repatriation Centre and deport to Zimbabwe.
“I suggested that there be liaison between us through our consulate in Johannesburg and authorities there that the consular has access to the people at Lindela firstly to verify if they are Zimbabweans.
“They (deportees) will then make representations because you realise that those who have just arrived and those who have been working in South Africa for a long time, some with families, are rounded up. It would be better to let them talk to their families and get their property.”
South Africa has, since our economic misfortunes of the past decade, provided job opportunities and a better life for many Zimbabweans. In desperation some went there illegally; others did so legally and possess valid permits.
But for the illegal immigrants, that has come at a cost. Many, on being deported, have suffered beatings and other forms of humiliation that violate their rights as human beings, at the hands of South African police.
At the highest political level, South Africa has been the pillar that has supported Zimbabwe at a time when our circumstances were most difficult. Our gratitude to them is so profound it is indescribable.
However, that camaraderie has not truly cascaded down to some South African citizens and law enforcement agents who continue to be hostile to immigrants, even weekend Zimbabwean shoppers to Messina or Johannesburg. A number of South African employers use some of the worst labour practices that include paying Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Malawian immigrants starvation wages while others assign foreigners menial jobs at the beginning of the month, and towards the end of that month, connive with police to have them deported before payday.
It is these people that Cde Mohadi is complaining of.
What they seem to forget is that a human being does not lose their humanity and dignity simply because they are in difficult social and economic circumstances. Such treatment violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Also, it contravenes the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families of 2003 whose primary objective is to protect migrant workers and their families, a particularly vulnerable population, from exploitation and the violation of their human rights.
The convention recognises the rights of regular immigrants as well as undocumented ones, which means that South African authorities are bound to uphold the rights of deportees too. The convention recognises that “the human problems involved in migration are even more serious in the case of irregular migration” and the need to encourage appropriate action “to prevent and eliminate clandestine movements and trafficking in migrant workers, while at the same time assuring the protection of their fundamental rights.”
The protocol advocates protection of the fundamental rights of undocumented migrant workers in Article 8.
Many Zimbabwean immigrants, who cannot claim their rights because they are unregistered, have suffered in silence in South Africa with nowhere to turn for support. But the worst suffering was experienced in Botswana; a country whose laws, in this day and age, permit public flogging of suspects by traditional chiefs at their courts.
Cde Mohadi said he had not received any reports of inhumane treatment of Zimbabwean deportees since he raised the official complaint with his South African counterpart. That civilised treatment must continue as authorities intensify their deportations because human rights are human rights.
Online Reporter