Asylum seekers protest

About 150 asylum seekers protested on Tuesday outside the Department of Home Affairs’ offices in central Johannesburg against alleged cruel treatment in a peaceful sit-down demonstration.

Sally Sealy from the Human Rights Committee (HRC), a Johannesburg-based NGO, told IRIN on Wednesday that the protest was staged because many asylum seekers are forced to wait weeks before being processed, while running the risk of deportation as illegal aliens.

“Day after day they queue in vain outside Home Affairs, some are told to come back a week later, meanwhile the asylum seekers have no status in South Africa, often the police pick them up and take them to Lindela (Repatriation Centre)”. Once in Lindela, 20 km east of Johannesburg, asylum seekers are often automatically deported back to their country of origin, Sealy added.

The Home Affairs office is notoriously slow in processing applications. “On a good day, the office will process maybe 12 applications, but there are usually at least 60 people in the queue,” Sealy said. Most of the asylum seekers are from Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The HRC said it wants Home Affairs to give all asylum seekers written proof that they have sought processing, to prevent them from being picked up by the police.

Home Affairs has cited lack of staff as the reason why asylum seekers are not dealt with speedily. UNHCR in Pretoria said it was very concerned about the huge backlog of asylum applications in South Africa. “There are about 25,000 such files,” UNHCR country representative Mengesha Kebede told IRIN on Wednesday. “We are aware that Home Affairs has a major resource problem, so we’ve employed a team of forty lawyers across the country to try and clear this enormous backlog,” Mengesha said. He added that UNHCR was helping by training Home Affairs staff and by providing translators.

Mengesha pointed out that currently, the South African government was in breech of its own Refugee Act, passed in 1998. “The Act stipulates that genuine asylum seekers are seen immediately and their status be decided on within 45 days, this is just not happening,” he said. UNHCR said that corruption was also an issue. Many asylum seekers do not speak English and Mengesha said some fall prey to criminals who offer to process their applications speedily for a fee.