HSF in court bid to challenge decision to terminate Zimbabwean Exemption Permit

South Africa’s decision to end special permits that allow 178 000 Zimbabweans to live and work in the country is to be challenged in court by the Helen Suzman Foundation.

The civil rights group said it has initiated legal action in a statement on Wednesday. The Zimbabwe Exemption Permits were granted to Zimbabweans who moved to the country before 2009 so that they could live and work in South Africa legally.

Permit holders “will be put to a desperate choice: to remain in South Africa as undocumented migrants with all the vulnerability that attaches to such status or return to a Zimbabwe that, to all intents and purposes, is unchanged from the country they fled,” the foundation said.

“There are thousands of children who have been born in South Africa to ZEP holders during this time who have never even visited their parents’ country of origin.”

About 3 million of the 60 million people living in South Africa are migrants, according to the national statistics agency. Many of them are Zimbabweans, who were driven south by two decades of economic collapse and political repression, with the bulk of them undocumented because they didn’t apply for the special permits or weren’t eligible.

The presence of so many foreigners in South Africa has sparked resentment among some locals, who see them as competitors for scarce jobs and housing, and the country has been wracked by intermittent xenophobic violence. The cabinet agreed to end the exemption program after the ruling African National Congress recorded its worst-ever electoral performance in a municipal vote last year.

“That South Africa’s ANC government is pandering to an orchestrated populist campaign of xenophobic scapegoating of foreigners, and specifically Zimbabweans, by canceling ZEPs should be deeply shaming,” said TaraO’Connor, executive director of London-based Africa Risk Consulting.

Takafavira Zhou, a political analyst at Great Zimbabwe University in the southeastern city of Masvingo, also said South Africa’s decision was ill-conceived, with Zimbabweans playing an important role in its economy and supporting their countrymen through remittances.

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We hope wherever she is, she has healed and accepted what happened! The late Killer Kau’s girlfriend was a beautiful young lady called Olwethu Mkhwanazi. The two were very private about their relationship while Killer Kau was alive and they both rarely shared pictures of each other, or of them together on social media.

The only time that we got a glimpse of Killer Kau’s girlfriend on his social media was when he posted a picture of the two of them together, Learn More