SOUTH Africa has announced it will not deport illegal Zimbabwean immigrants until at least March 31 after extending a deadline for them to regularise their stay.
Rights groups estimate there is an estimated 1,5 million illegal Zimbabwean immigrants living in South Africa, but only 275,000 had applied for work and business permits between September 1 and the December 31 deadline last year.
"There will be no deportations until the end of March," said Ricky Naidoo, spokesman for the South African Department of Home Affairs.
The lull in deportations will give the department time to process more than 275,000 applications for permits received so far. The process has been delayed by Zimbabwe’s slow pace of issuing passports to its nationals.
"We are trying our best to complete the adjudication process in the next few weeks," Naidoo said.
The South African government relaxed its requirements as the December 31 deadline approached and now awaits a variety of outstanding documents, including passports, to process the applications.
Zimbabwean migrant rights organisations in South Africa, such as the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum (ZEF), and People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), expressed their appreciation.
"They [the South African government] even accepted applications with just birth certificates and, in some instances, not even that," said Braam Hanekom of PASSOP.
The two NGOs are helping migrants who have applied for permits to obtain the required documents. The biggest problem was getting a Zimbabwean passport.
ZEF's Gabriel Shumba estimated that at least 100,000 applications for South African permits had been submitted without passports.
Naidoo said South Africa had offered to help the Zimbabwean government issue the passports, but refused to comment on whether the offer had been accepted.
By the end of last week, 42,779 applications had been finalised and approved, 10,166 were awaiting review, and 222,817 were awaiting adjudication.
Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean migrants could face deportation from South Africa, "as only about a sixth of the estimated Zimbabwean irregular migrant population applied for legal status," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement.
"There are an estimated 1.5 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, many of whom migrated as a result of the social and economic unrest in Zimbabwe in recent years."
The organisation has reception centres for refugees at the Beitbridge border crossing from Zimbabwe to South Africa and in Plumtree, the main border crossing between Zimbabwe and Botswana, and is on standby to provide free transportation to deportees.
With support from local and international bodies, IOM has prepositioned non-food items including tents and blankets.
ZEF's Shumba said inadequate publicity about the regularisation process and lack of information on the requirements had deterred many Zimbabweans from applying.
Employers had also often been reluctant to provide letters of employment for fear of persecution. "The home affairs [department] assured these employers that there will be no action taken against them a bit too late," Shumba said.
"Most Zimbabwean migrants work part-time, it was difficult for them to establish full-time employment," Hanekom noted.
Nevertheless, Zimbabweans migrants could still apply for asylum, he said. "The application will provide them a temporary asylum seeker’s status until their interview to establish whether they qualify - this can take up to two years."
He noted that asylum applications by Zimbabweans had a dismal record, "95 percent of them get rejected, but it can still get you some time."
In the past 10 years, as hyperinflation, and social and economic problems have rocked Zimbabwe, more and more Zimbabweans have sought refuge in neighbouring South Africa, the most economically advanced country in the region.