SA extends passport deadline to end of July

By Sydney Kawadza
The South African government has extended the deadline for Zimbabweans staying in the country without passports to regularise their stay to July 31 this year.
This was announced by that country’s Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dhlamini-Zuma at a joint Press briefing with her Zimbabwean counterparts, co-Ministers Kembo Mohadi and Theresa Makone in Pretoria on Tuesday.
The ministers said of the 280 000 Zimbabweans who had applied for passports, only 60 000 are outstanding.
Of these 60 000, about 17 000 people did not have documents to prove they are Zimbabweans.
“So, you can see the majority of the applicants have passports and their applications are being processed.
“Only 60 000 of 280 000 are outstanding. So, we need to sort this out.
“But of these 60 000, half of them had not even applied for passports at the close of the process (December 31 2010).
“So we hope they are applying so they can recei-ve their passports and be sorted out.”
Minister Dhlamini-Zuma said 17 000 applicants had no identification documents, birth certificates or any other documentation.
“Their process will take a bit longer because we will have to send their names to Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe will have to look at them to ascertain whether they are in their population register.
“Those that are not must be interviewed so this will also take a bit of time to resolve.
“But we are happy with the process because it is the minority that still requires passports.
“More than 200 000 have passports. So, there has been a lot of progress in this area,” she said.
Minister Mohadi said Zimbabwe was prepared to clear the backlog before the deadline.
“When we look at the rate in which we are churning out passports in Zimbabwe, we think that within a very short space of time, say about 20 weeks, we will have issued everyone who has applied with the requisite documents.
“There are people who do not have any documents with them and these people will be referred back to Zimbabwe because for one to obtain a passport in Zimbabwe, one must have a birth certificate.
“So once the birth certificate is obtained, we can process the application for a passport. We are very pleased about the progress thus far.”
Minister Makone said Government was wary that the 17 000 without documents could be of other nationalities.
“The process recommended by the Registrar-General is as follows – he will send two officials with a database to South Africa and those without documents will be thoroughly interviewed.
“The names, surnames, names of parents etc must also correlate with what is on the database.
“This will enable us to separate the Zimbabwean nationals from those identifying themselves as Zimbabwean nationals,” she said.
The Registrar-General, she said, had promised to produce 3 000 passports per week, including on weekends.
Meanwhile, Minister Mohadi expressed concern about airlines that bring people from the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes and Asia without proper documentation.
He said these would be immediately deported.
Minister Mohadi said there was need to plug borders against illegal immigrants.
“It is not just the trafficking of humans that we are talking about, there are also security concerns because we do not know these people.
“We do not know what they are after; we do not know if they are fleeing from justice.
“You will remember that the Far East or Asia is an area where we have a lot of activities that are taking place, this is where terrorist organisations emanate from.”