The plea of eight Zimbabwean parents to be reunited with
their children will be heard at the Pretoria High Court at 2pm today.
The families' advocate will ask the court to halt a plan by
the Zimbabwean and South African governments to repatriate the children to a
shelter in Zimbabwe.
The parents‚ Zimbabwean nationals who live in the Cape‚ had
their children sent to South Africa unaccompanied on the back of a truck
without travel documents in order to have them live or visit with them over the
holiday season. But they claim they know where their children were.
The children never arrived in the Cape as they were taken
in by the police on November 11 as victims of human trafficking and were kept
from their parents in a safe house for three months.
Their current whereabouts are unknown even to parents and
lawyers. Many parents are frantically trying to contact their children.
Advocate Simba Chitando is asking for an urgent interdict
to stop the children’s repatriation. This application comes after the
departments of Social Development and Home Affairs confirmed to TimesLIVE the children
will be repatriated to Zimbabwe within days.
Home Affairs has provided a waiver as the department does
not have all their documentation. The International Organisation for Migration
is helping with transport to take children to Zimbabwe to be placed in a
shelter‚ director Richard Ots confirmed.
Priska‚ one of the mothers‚ travelled from Cape Town to
Rustenberg to see her child. She keeps saying she does not know if her child is
dead or alive. “Is he dead? I am so worried!”
The court application provides affidavits from all parents
and the birth certificates for seven of the eight children‚ to prove the
parents' identity and parental status. Times
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