And the department of home affairs said the backlog of 144 000 asylum applications has been caused by economic refugees who fled Zimbabwe to get work in South Africa.
George Kruys, a research associate for the Institute for Strategic Studies at the University of Pretoria, said: “The result is a national concern that further (illegal) migration from Zimbabwe will cause even greater hardship for many South Africans.”
Economic migrants include legal and illegal migrants. An illegal migrant is an undocumented person who has entered the country secretly or has stayed after his papers have expired.
Kruys said the director-general of home affairs was expected to make drastic changes to passports “well before 2010” so that fewer could be falsified.
But South Africa’s extensive borders and lack of control at access points have facilitated a massive influx of illegal immigrants.
Kruys said official statistics showed that of the 245 294 people deported in 2006, 127 097 were from Zimbabwe.
More than 117 000 Zimbabweans were deported between January and July this year alone. The current monthly average of deportation is 16 000 with a peak of 21 400 in January.
However, Kruys said the number of deportations was a “small number of the total (coming in)” as between 1 000 and 5 000 Zimbabweans streamed across South Africa’s borders every day.
Some of these sought asylum to gain temporary legal residence in South Africa.
According to home affairs, of the 3 074 Zimbabweans who applied for asylum in the first three months of this year, only 79 were granted, partly because economic migrants were not deemed eligible for asylum.
Yet despite the large number of Zimbabweans seeking work or asylum in South Africa, the government has refused to build refugee camps.
Illegal migrants caught by border police are usually kept at the holding facility in Lindela, Krugersdorp. Although the facility can accommodate about 4 000 people at one time, almost 15 000 illegal Zimbabwean migrants were deported from this facility in the first two weeks of July.
Conditions at offices for asylum seekers are reportedly “‘extremely bad” and a visit by the National Assembly’s home affairs committee revealed that conditions at the Marabastad office near Pretoria were “inhumane and a massive crisis”.
Here, only 15 staff were available to process
1 000 asylum-seeker applications each day. Only 50 to 75 applications were actually processed.
Kruys said the unchecked movement of refugees and economic migrants into the country would have a negative effect on poorer South Africans trying to make ends meet.
“Until the situation in Zimbabwe improves, South Africa will most probably be forced to ‘muddle through’, and employ a somewhat flexible approach to day-to-day migration problems.”
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