According to media reports, the Helen Suzman Foundation
(HSF) wants the Zimbabwe Exemption Permits (ZEPs) extended beyond December 31,
2022.
The permits expired on 31 December 31, 2021, but permit
holders were given a 12-month grace period to regularise their stay or face
deportation.
“It is not the position of HSF that those migrants who are
in South Africa unlawfully should not be entitled to remain, nor even that the
ZEP must continue in perpetuity,” the foundation said.
“Rather, our position is that those who have scrupulously
observed South Africa’s laws in order to live and work here, under the ZEP,
cannot have such permits terminated without fair process, good reason and a
meaningful opportunity to regularise their status. It is what our
constitutional order demands.”
The foundation added: “This special dispensation regime has
offered legal protection to approximately
178 000 Zimbabwean nationals, allowing them to live, work
and study in South Africa. It has prevailed for well over a decade, meaning
that permit holders have built lives, families and careers here, and contributed
to South Africa and its
economy.
“They 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.
“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.” Newsday
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