South Africa: Call for More Resources As Zimbabweans Flood Home Affairs

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Call for More Resources As Zimbabweans Flood Home Affairs

Siyabonga Kalipa

14 May 2009

Cape Town — Refugee rights organisation People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP) has called for the Department of Home Affairs to beef up their capacity to deal with a special dispensation for Zimbabwean nationals.

This follows chaos at the Department of Home Affairs Barrack Street offices on Monday this week when hundreds of Zimbabwean nationals flooded the office seeking bridging documentation that would carry them over until the introduction of the special dispensation.

The dispensation, which was announced by the Department of Home Affairs last month but has yet to be enacted, would allow Zimbabweans to stay and work in the country for up to six months.

Gloria Muti from Zimbabwe, who was queueing at the Barrack Street offices on Wednesday, said she had been in the queue on Monday, but that the situation had been so chaotic that officials could not control the crowd.

Since then, she said officials had assigned different days for men and women to alleviate over-crowding.

But PASSOP's Braam Hanekom said the queues at the Barrack Street offices had also been seen at the Nyanga office.

Hanekom said the department should seek more resources as numbers would increase.

"The department has taken on an enormous task and they need to get help in terms of more resources and more staff."

Department of Home Affairs spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy said the department had not started issuing the special dispensation because they were still working on the implementation plan.

But she said the people queuing in Barrack street had been there to get a letter which stated they had been to the department to apply for a monthly permit. This was a temporary permit leading up to the special dispensation, she said.