Home Office to inquire about Zimbabweans it tried to deport

The department will now conduct consultations without a “predetermined outcome,” Leon Schreiber, who was appointed interior minister late last month, said in an interview Wednesday.

The presence of migrants in South Africa is a sensitive political issue in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 30% and a government that has struggled to provide basic services. The country has been plagued by periodic xenophobic riots since 2008 and the decision to end special permits for citizens of Zimbabwe and Lesotho had been interpreted by some critics as an attempt to shore up support for the ruling party at the time, the African National Congress.

The court told us that “you cannot have a predetermined outcome and then retroactively claim that a consultation has taken place,” said Schreiber, a member of the Democratic Alliance, which is in a governing coalition with the African National Congress following the May 29 election. “We need to really see what works for South Africa and what works for the people affected.”

Schreiber’s predecessor, Aaron Motsoaledi, had in 2021 set in motion a process that would force migrants, most of whom have had the right to live and work in South Africa since 2009, to apply for other categories of work permits, which most would not qualify for, or leave the country. That led to a legal battle that culminated in the department losing an appeal in the Constitutional Court in June.

The 2009 decision to allow Zimbabweans to stay in the country legally was based on the country’s economic collapse and there has been little improvement since. Today, the 178,000 Zimbabweans who benefited from that decision, along with many hundreds of thousands of the country’s documented and undocumented migrants, work in a variety of occupations in the country, from CEOs to gardeners to waiters.

The Lesotho Exemption Permit was implemented in 2016 due to what the department described as a “socio-economic” crisis in that country.

Currently, those who have the permits can legally remain in the country until November 29 of next year.

Schreiber said he is reconstituting an immigration advisory board, which despite being a legal requirement has not been in place for a decade, and will draw on its experience to design a path forward.