Motsoaledi: If you know you don’t qualify to be in a country, why stay?

The Citizen – 27 March 2022

'It can't be that Zimbabweans and Basotho have got a different law to rule them when everyone else is under immigration laws,' says Motsoaledi.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has slammed claims ZEP holders will not qualify for any other visa and will be forced to leave the country as a result.

This as Cabinet decided to no longer issue extensions with the ZEP, which ended on 31 December, and further decided on a 12-month grace period.

During the grace period, ZEP holders must apply for other permits appropriate to their particular status or situation.

Those who are not successful will have to leave South Africa or be deported.

Speaking to Newsroom Afrika on Wednesday, Motsoaledi said the government had systems in place to ensure all the applications sent during this period are processed.

The government was working with the UN to process the applications, he said.

“They’ve helped us with money and we’ve hired people to help, even Treasury has given us extra money to hire more people,” said Motsoaledi.

He further slammed claims that all ZEP holders would not qualify for any other visa.

“Who said they don’t qualify? How do they know they don’t qualify? If you know that you don’t qualify to be in a country, why do you stay? They can’t force me to work outside the law, this country is not run on feelings of people, it is run by the law. We’ve got the constitution which must be respected by all.”

Motsoaledi denied allegations that the ANC government was playing to the public gallery by not renewing the Special Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) ahead of the 2024 elections.

With the rise of Operation Dudula and other movements calling for undocumented foreign nationals to leave the country, the government has been accused of using the migrant crisis as a scapegoat for its failures.

But Motsoaledi says that’s “rubbish”.

“I’ve never once scapegoated any migrant, when we started planning ahead for the ZEP, there were no masses who were doing what they’re doing. There was no Operation Dudula. We started at the beginning of 2021 in January knowing the ZEP was going to expire in December. We’re not pandering to anybody, we’re just trying to manage our situation for our democracy. People are just making wild statements without understanding how the situation is.”

He said while the government knew just how many asylum seekers and refugees were in the country, no one knew how many undocumented foreign nationals were in the country.

“We do have the number of people who are refugees in South Africa and those are under international protection. We have he numbers because we even give them IDs. We do have the number of asylum seekers in the country. We know the number of people who are on a work visa, and the number of permanent residents because we report their names to parliament every year.

“What we don’t know is the number of people who are illegal, if we knew them then they wouldn’t be illegal. They’re hiding, and don’t want to come out. They just arrived. We believe it is normal for any human being when you arrive in any country to announce yourself and say I’m here, and tell us what you’re looking for and we see how to help you. Those who are illegal, how do we know their number because even organisations in SA, including StatsSA are just doing estimates. Some are saying the estimate is between 3.5 and 5 million people who are here illegally, but we don’t have such figures, how can we have them because somebody who is illegal is exactly that. They’re doing something illegally and did not report themselves to anyone. Many of them don’t even want to be known.”

‘Laws rule the country, not emotions’

Motsoaledi said the end of the ZEPs had nothing to do with emotions and xenophobia, but the laws of the country.

“I’m not going to be blackmailed into that because if I allow myself to be blackmailed, we’ll never be able to run the state. The special permit was not only given to Zimbabweans, it was also given to Basotho and Angolans,”

“In 1998 only 11,000 people came to South Africa to ask for asylum, all of a sudden in 2008, the number changed to 207,000 and most people were from Zimbabwe, and the following year another 227,000. Within two years, we were faced with more than 400,000 people asking for asylum. The system was not designed for that, it was overrun and Home Affairs decided to give them special payments in order to deal with the situation,” said Motsoaledi.

“We said the time has arrived that normal immigration laws must apply, so we’re not changing any law, immigration laws have always been there. We’re saying they must apply like every other person who comes here. It can’t be that Zimbabweans and Basotho have got a different law to rule them when everyone else is under immigration laws.”

www.samigration.com

My 13-year fight with Home Affairs to regain my identity

Drum – 27-03-2022

 

As Thami Swartbooi fought to get back her stolen identity, her life stood still. She wasn’t able to get her driver’s licence and wasn’t able to vote in any post-2006 elections. She also wasn’t able to marry her partner after he had paid lobola.

In 2019, Thami Swartbooi spoke to Drum about her battle that had stretched for well over a decade to get her identity back after it was stolen. This is her story.

She lived a full life, with a promising career at a bank and a happy home. She and her partner had big dreams – they were looking forward to a future together as husband and wife and her little girl was growing up fast.

But Nomathamsanqa Swartbooi’s dreams were snuffed out in a heartbeat when she learnt she was “married” to a man she didn’t know from a bar of soap. Her identity had been stolen – and so began over a decade of frustration and heartache for the Johannesburg woman.

Thami, as everyone calls her, discovered the shocking news when she went to cast her vote in the 2006 municipal elections. To her dismay officials told her that her surname had been changed on the voters’ roll. Thami Swartbooi was now Thami Nofemeli.

For the next 13 years she became locked in a standoff with home affairs in a desperate effort to reclaim her identity and prove she wasn’t married. And for 13 years the door was slammed in her face. It was only last month she managed to get her identity back when the new minister of home affairs, Aaron Motsoaledi, intervened after her story started making waves in the media.

“How do you explain the fact that after fighting for 13 years, this matter gets resolved just three days after appearing in the media?” she says angrily.

“All of a sudden they have answers.”

It’s been a long and trying journey for Thami (43). While she’s glad the matter has finally been resolved, she can’t help feeling betrayed by the department whose mission it is to safeguard the identity of citizens.

After the shock at the voting station Thami, who lives in Finetown, Joburg South, wasted no time reporting the matter to home affairs. Officials told her she’d supposedly tied the knot in 2005 and that the union was valid.

“They asked me to give them six months to a year to resolve the problem because the matter was ‘difficult’.”

Months passed and still she remained without an identity. Thami hasn’t been able to get her driver’s licence and wasn’t able to vote in any post-2006 elections. She also wasn’t able to marry her partner, John Tshiwo (45).

He’d paid lobola but because she had no valid ID they couldn’t take matters any further.

“You just live a meaningless life. It’s like you don’t exist,” she says.

The crisis deepened when Thami discovered she no longer qualified for credit. The mystery woman who stole her ID, who’s being sought by home affairs and believed to be married to Thami’s false husband, was running up debt in her name, opening accounts and getting loans.

“I was blacklisted,” Thami says. “Every time I wanted to open a clothing account I was refused.

“At Foschini I was told I had a lay-by. I was so shocked.”

The administrative complications of Thami’s situation caused untold problems. In 2008 she gave birth to her son, Lwando, and was excited that her daughter, Masibulele (now 18), had a sibling. But the little boy’s arrival only brought more stress as she was unable to register his birth.

“I was told if I wanted to register him, he’d have to take the surname I was fighting to free myself of,” Thami says.

She couldn’t claim any maternity benefits either.

When Lwando was two, the family discovered he had speech problems and took him to hospital in the hope of getting him examined. But mother and son were turned away because the little boy had no birth certificate. “And we didn’t have the money to take him to a private hospital.”

When the time came for Lwando to go to Grade R she was relieved that a school in the Joburg CBD where they were living was prepared to overlook the fact that he didn’t have a birth certificate and accept him. His mom could fill in the requisite paperwork once she’d sorted out her nightmare, they said.

“They were gracious,” Thami says.

In 2014 the family was forced to move from the city centre to Finetown because they could no longer afford rent. They wanted to enrol Lwando in a local school but he was refused because of the birth certificate issue, so Thami now has to spend R40 a day on transport and R940 a month on school fees for him.

Money has been tight since she lost her job at Absa, where she was a promising temporary employee, having started as a call-centre agent and then moved to the administration department. She was on track to being appointed permanently but her prospects plummeted when the company checked her credit record.

“What’s most painful is that I started the department with the manager. Six people were hired after me and I trained them. “They were taken on permanently, and I was left out in the cold.”

She went to job interviews but was rejected at every turn because of her credit score.

“It became the story of my life.”

Thami hasn’t been able to work for eight years and the family survives on what her partner makes as a technician. Without work Thami redoubled her efforts at trying to solve the problem.

“I saw it as my job to now go to home affairs. The staff knew me there. When they saw me they’d say, ‘Here comes trouble’.

“Some of them would tell me, ‘Don’t make your problem our problem’, or they’d just tell me to stand there and I’d wait for hours.”

There were times when she broke down and wept in front of them. “That place was hell. They don’t care.”

Thami sent emails to former home affairs ministers but nothing helped.

“I even tweeted [ former home affairs minister Malusi] Gigaba until he blocked me.”

Eventually she approached the Wits Law Clinic, which took Thami’s plight to the media and finally action was taken. She received her smart ID card recently and home affairs has said it will give her an official letter to present to debtors explaining that someone had been impersonating her. This should lift the blacklisting.

Lwando has finally received a birth certificate, 10 years after his birth, which has overjoyed his mother.

“I am genuinely happy for my son. It really touched my heart, even more so than when I received my ID.”

But Thami remains bitter. “Home affairs may think they have resolved this, but I’m left with scars.

“The phone still rings nonstop from people saying I owe them money. Others are looking for my so-called husband. “Home affairs destroyed my life.”

Minister of home affairs Aaron Motsoaledi has apologised “profusely” to Thami for her years of hell.

“I don’t know whether she can ever find it in her heart to forgive [us]. What she went through was terrible. The issue I’m apologizing about is that it took too long.”

The department of home affairs is continuing its investigations into the circumstances surrounding Thami’s case.

www.samigraton.com

The declaration of undesirability

On the 26th of May 2014 the Department of Home Affairs (the ‘Department’) showed its intent to amend the existing immigration laws that had been in effect since the 1st of July 2005.

Without any transitional period, the Department made it patently clear that a foreigner who overstays, as set out in the Immigration Regulations 2014, would no longer be sanctioned by a mere fine on departure, but rather by a compulsory and non-discretionary declaration of undesirability and on ban on any such foreigner from returning to South Africa for up to 5 years.

Therefore a foreign applicant departing South Africa who:

• Has a previous visa and has renewed or changed status of same in South Africa and has a pending application attributed solely as a result of the Department’s inefficiency in failing to adjudicate expeditiously;
• Has South African relatives remaining in South Africa despite he or she being the spouse, parent, child or dependent minor relative of a South African citizen or permanent resident;
• Has overstayed through no fault on medical grounds;
• Has overstayed due to simply ignorance or fault.

All the above cases would all be treated exactly the same since there is no discretion in the application of an overstay in the departure out of South Africa and being declared undesirable up to 5 years.

The immigration laws – section 30(1)(h), reguation 27 & directive 9

On the 26th of May 2014, the Department sought to repeal the Immigration Regulations of 2005 and introduced a series of statutory amendments to the Immigration Act of 2002, as amended, and to the previous Immigration Regulations of 2005.

Regrettably, in light of the severity of the effect of the new laws, very little consultation with the public and its own immigration advisory board took place by the then Minister Naledi Pandor and in so doing turned the face of our immigration policy on its head.

The introduction of new draconian sanctions, not only affecting those foreigners leaving South Africa for various reasons, but so too local South Africans – with the declaration of being determined to be an ‘undesirable’ person in terms of section 30(1)(h) of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002, as amended, read together with Regulation 27 of the Immigration Regulations, and most significantly, Directive 9 issued by the Director-General of Home Affairs.

So how do I become undesirable?

The effect of the 2014 Regulations and especially Directive 9 will now empower and instruct the immigration officials at the international airports and border posts of South Africa to impose a declaration of undesirability that will effectively bar the re-entry into South Africa for a fixed period of time before re-entry.

Any foreigner, no matter what the circumstance or context is, who has then overstayed, will on departure in terms of section 50(1), 30(1)(h) of the Act, read with Regulation 27 and Directive 9 be declared undesirable and issued with a Form 19 to confirm the declaration.

Can I appeal the undesirability and return to South Africa?

As outlined above, any foreigner who has overstayed, will as a matter of course be declared undesirable for a period of up to 5 years.

What the Department has allowed for is an appeal mechanism to the Director-General within 10 days or to the Minister of Home Affairs without a defined time period.

It was evident that after a mere few days of operation that the new laws on undesirability and imminent litigation by immigration law firms, like ourselves, against the Department they introduced a more visible and transparent internal appeal mechanism to those affected by such new laws.

In this way those foreigner who have been declared undesirable can now appeal and ventilate their case with the Department in a more transparent manner as to whether the ban should be lifted or not. And, as importantly, in a reasonable period of time.

Of course, it is not obligatory on the Department to lift the undesirability or in fact have the matter adjudicated in a short space of time.

www.samigration.com

 

South African Business Visa

A business visa may be issued by the Department of Home Affairs to a foreigner intending to establish or invest in a business in South Africa in which he or she may be employed, and to members of such foreigners’ immediate family providing that certain requirements have been met.

The Act calls for investment of R5,0 million in a business and you need to make sure you employ 60% South African citizens or permanent residents to get both a temporary and permanent business visa, you can get these visas with less capital investment - sometimes for as low as R600,000 investment using our expert team at SA Migration.

Many businesses do not require a capital investment as large as R5 million and in certain cases, you are allowed to reduce this amount and commit to a smaller investment if your business falls within the certain industries. The following businesses to be in the national interest, and therefore qualifying for reduction or waiver of the capitalisation requirements as determined to be in the national interest in relation to a Business Visa: Many of these business owners do not have the required investment amounts. If this is the case and the business falls in line with one of the following industries, a capital waiver can be requested. This would mean a reduction in the required investment amount.

The industries are:

(a) Agro-processing

• Fisheries and aquaculture i.e. freshwater aquaculture and marine culture
• Food processing in the milling and baking industries
• Beverages viz. fruit juices and the local beneficiation, packaging and export of indigenous teas
• High value natural fibres viz., organic cotton and downstream mohair production
• High value organic food for the local and export market
• Biofuels production viz. bioethanol and biogas
• oils: tea extracts, including buchu, honeybush: and other oil derivatives (avocado, amarula etc.)
• Diversification / beneficiation of biomass sources i.e. sugar, maize

(b) Business Process Outsourcing and IT Enabled Services

• Call centers
• Back Office Processing
• Shared Corporate Services
• Enterprise solutions e.g. fleet management and asset management
• Legal process outsourcing

(c) Capital / Transport equipment, metals and electrical machinery and apparatus

• Basic iron and steel
• Basic precious and non-ferrous metals
• Casting of metals
• Other fabricated metal products: metalwork service activities
• General purpose machinery
• Tooling manufacturing
• Foundries
• White goods and associated components
• Electric motors, generators and transformers
• Electricity distribution and control apparatus
• Insulated wire and cable
• Accumulators, primary cells and primary batteries

(d) Electro Technical

• Advanced telecommunications
• Software development
• Software and mobile applications
• Smart metering
• Embedded software
• Radio frequency identifications
• Digital TV and Set Top Boxes due to migration to full digital television
• Process control, measurement and instrumentation
• Security and monitoring solutions
• Financial software
• Manufacturing sensors

(e) Textile, Clothing and Leather

• Spinning, weaving and finishing of textiles
• Knitted and crocheted fabrics and articles
• Wearing apparel except fur apparel
• Dressing and dying of fur
• Leather skins and hides beneficiation

(f) Consumer goods

• White goods and associated components

(g) Boatbuilding

• Boatbuilding and associated services industry
• Engines and engine systems
• Marine equipment and accessories

(h) Pulp, paper and Furniture

• Manufacture of paper products: publishing, printing and reproduction
• Manufacture of articles of straw and plaiting materials
• Paper and paper products and furniture
• Manufacture of wood and products of wood and cork

(i) Automotives and Components

• engines, radiators, filters and components thereof
• air conditioners / climate control systems
• alarms and Tracking devices
• axles, transmission shafts
• body parts and panels
• catalytic converters, silencers and exhaust systems and components
• wiring harnesses, instrument panels vehicle interiors, electronic drive train components,
• lighting equipment
• seats and parts thereof, seatbelts, leather covers
• suspension and shock absorbers, springs and parts thereof
• steering wheels, columns and boxes
• ignition, starting equipment, gauges and instrument parts

(J) Green Economy Industries

(jj) Power generation:

• Nuclear Build Programmer i.e. joint ventures, consortiums and the establishment of new companies to grow South Africa's nuclear manufacturing capability and nuclear supply industry to supply into the nuclear build programme
• Independent power generation, energy infrastructure and alternative energy

(jjj) Renewable Energy:

• Onshore wind power - manufacture of turbines/blades
• Solar PV and Concentrated Solar Power manufacture/assembly
• Biomass
• Small hydro
• Lowering greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites
• Energy efficiency and energy saving industries
• Solar water heaters
• Waste Management and Recycling
• Reducing landfill

(k) Advanced Manufacturing

• Nano-materials
• High performance materials based on natural resources (advanced bio-composites
• Advanced materials, polymers and composites
• Medical devices, diagnostics and composites
• Space e.g. satellite manufacturers etc. and astronomy e.g. SKA, telescopes, dishes etc.
• Composites (intelligent textiles used in medical, building and construction industries)
• Continuous fibre reinforced thermoform composites
• Biochemical and biologics for applications in agriculture, industry and health/medical sectors
• Electricity demand Site Management Solutions to improve electricity efficiency usage
• Lasers and laser-based additive manufacturing various applications
• Advanced Robotics Mobile Intelligent Autonomous Systems
• Applications in the mining industry, data collection and analysis
• Bio - manufacturing - Biochemical and biologics for applications in agriculture, industry and health/medical.
• Fuel cells and Technology

(l) Tourism infrastructure

• Accommodation - hotels, boutique hotels, lodges and resorts
• urban integrated tourism/ entertainment precincts
• adventure, - eco-, sport-, conference- and cultural tourism
• infrastructure developments
• leisure complexes and world class golf courses
• harbour and waterfront developments
• trans frontier conservations areas
• Tourism transport - aviation, rail, cruise liners etc.
• green building and green technologies for tourism
• attractions and activity - based tourism.
• museums and heritage

(m) Chemicals, plastic fabrication and pharmaceuticals

• basic chemicals
• water treatment chemical products
• man-made fibres
• plastic products: polypropylene and polyvinculchloride
• medical (drips and syringes), manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredient
• (APIs) for key anti-retrovirals (ARVs)
• Manufacture of reagents for AIDS/HIV diagnostics
• Production of vaccines and biological medicines

(n) Creative and Design Industry

• Film studios, treaty film co-production ventures, distribution infrastructure
• Servicing of foreign productions
• Production of film and documentaries, commercials, stills photography and
• Multi-media
• Post-production
• Design
• Jewellery manufacturing and design
• Fashion design

(o) Oil and Gas

• Maintenance ship and rig repair
• Fabrication - equipment and specialised components
• Specialised services - training and accreditation
• Specialised services - non-descriptive testing, inspection services, SHEQ services
• Exploration - technical services: seismic surveys, logging, environmental impact assessments, etc.
• Exploration - offshore
• Exploration - onshore shale gas
• Exploration - onshore coal bed methane and underground coal gasification
• Infrastructure - refineries (Oil and GTL)
• Infrastructure - terminals LPG/LNG import, storage and distribution
• Infrastructure - ports and associated infrastructure
• Infrastructure - storage
• Logistics - pipeline

(p) Mineral beneficiation

• Downstream processing and value addition

(q) Infrastructure Development

(r) ICT

• Geoamatics and Digital media
• Wireless and Telecom
• Electronics
• IT
• Software Development
• Advanced programming

List of undesirable Business in South Africa;

• Businesses that import second hand motor vehicles into the Republic of South Africa for the purpose of exporting to other markets outside the Republic of South Africa
• The exotic entertainment industry
• Security Industry

Our team of professionals at SA Migration International will assist you and help you to obtain your business visa for you.

South Africa is going through a very exciting stage at the moment and there is lots of opportunity to be involved in this emerging economy and the government welcomes anyone wishing to invest and create employment. Especially for small business owners, the markets are extremely lucrative and the government welcomes anyone who wants to invest.

How can we help you , please email us to info@samigration.com whatsapp me on:

 +27 82 373 8415, where are you now? check our website : www.samigration.com

 

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www.samigration.com

 

Abandoned Asylum Seeker Status – What does it mean and what can I do

Home Affairs implemented the Refugees Act and certain provisions of new regulations (both implemented on 1 January 2020), which sought to return asylum seekers back to their home country, simply for being a month late in renewing a visa where they could face detention without trial, rape, torture or death,

This had the effect that if you did not renew your asylum in 30 days under the new Act you could no longer pay a fine for being illegal and simply continue with your asylum . This is a huge problem so for example if you expired during lockdown you could in theory be deported as there was no provision for a fine .

Home Affairs has been interdicted from implementing certain provisions of the Refugees Act and new regulations (both implemented on 1 January 2020), which sought to return asylum seekers back to their home country, where they could face detention without trial, rape, torture or death, simply for being a month late in renewing a visa.

The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town, represented on a pro bono basis by Norton Rose Fulbright and advocates David Simonsz and Nomonde Nyembe, sought to prevent the short- and long-term operation of the abandonment provisions, as the provisions infringed on asylum seekers’ rights to life, freedom and security of person, dignity and equality; and prevented South Africa from fulfilling its international law obligations towards refugees, including the international law principle of non-refoulement. The suspended provisions are commonly referred to as the ’’abandonment provisions’’.

The suspension will operate until the constitutional attack against the impugned provisions has been adjudicated on by the Western Cape High Court and, to the extent necessary, confirmed by the Constitutional Court.

’’The abandonment provisions meant that in the event that an asylum seeker fails to renew their asylum visa timeously, their applications for asylum are deemed abandoned. Arrest and deportation would follow for individuals with valid and undecided claims for asylum. Only where an asylum seeker has a compelling reason (and proof thereof) for delaying to renew a permit following a lapse (such as hospitalisation or imprisonment), can the Department of Home Affairs pardon the late renewal.

’’This is deeply problematic as it means that refugees can be returned to face persecution, without ever having the substantive merits of their asylum application determined.

www.samigration.com