‘Show us bus ticket’

The asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected are accusing home affairs officials at the Desmond Tutu Refugee Centre in Marabastad, Pretoria, of refusing to return their passports unless they show a Zimbabwe-bound bus ticket first.

According to Spiwe (not her real name), who applied for asylum in 2016, hundreds of rejected refugee claimants have been ordered by officials to buy bus tickets as a condition to obtain their passports.

“Our passports are held as bondage,” she says. “We only get them back if we buy an international bus ticket to Zimbabwe and show proof of the itinerary to the home affairs officers.

“They gave us receipts to show our passports are held and demanded we return with bus tickets in hand.”

Spiwe, who is from Zimbabwe’s capital Harare and works as a dishwasher at a Johannesburg restaurant, says she is frightened to return to her home country.

“It is against my will,” she says. “There is a cholera disease outbreak. People have died, I fear to go back there.”

Her friend Jane (not her real name) was also refused asylum and was instructed to buy a deportation bus ticket. She suspects that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s election win has motivated home affairs officials to declare Zimbabwe safe for refugees to return.

“I was a member of the opposition,” says Jane. “I fled to South Africa when Zanu-PF militias put my name on a list. I dread returning. I will be arrested in Zimbabwe for ‘border jumping’ and sit in prison.”

Jane says she lives with two children who attend school in Johannesburg. “I applied for asylum five years ago. Imagine what will happen to my kids if forced to return to Zimbabwe?”

Police on the N1 road from Johannesburg to Zimbabwe issue fines to cross-border buses that ferry passengers who do not hold valid passports.

“No bus operator will issue me a ticket till I produce a passport,” says Jane. “They won’t even sympathise with me until I show a passport. And home affairs has confiscated my passport.”

Home affairs spokesperson Thabo Mokgola said the department did not keep passports of failed asylum seekers. – GroundUp