Refugee family gets to stay in South Africa for the moment

A REFUGEE family from the DRC, who spent months on a Pretoria pavement before the parents were arrested and their children placed in care, have received a reprieve just hours after they were due to be deported.

This follows a report by Independent Media’s Foreign Editor, Shannon Ebrahim, yesterday on the plight of the Biamungu* family, who are Tutsis from the DRC, which detailed how they had been forced to flee their country and ended up in a Zimbabwe refugee camp, from where they fled across the border at Musina after beatings and death threats by Hutus in the camp.

But once they reached South Africa, they found themselves in a legal morass as they already had refugee status in Zimbabwe. They were removed from the pavement where they had camped out with other refugees until the beginning of June, and sent to the Kgosi Mampuru Prison, while their five children were taken away by social welfare officials.

Efforts by the Department of Home Affairs on Thursday to take the family to the embassy of the DRC and insist on their deportation flies in the face of principles and international law guiding the treatment of refugees who should not be returned to a country they fled to avoid persecution and where their lives may be in danger.

Yesterday the imminent deportation was halted after Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Fatima Chohan, was alerted to the situation by the media. Given the fact South Africa cannot give the family refugee status as they already have such status in Zimbabwe, Chohan said they had to deport them to Zimbabwe.

But the family’s lawyer Nyaradzo Chiwa, who has taken on their case pro bono, convince d Chohan that sending them to Zimbabwe could endanger them. Yesterday Chiwa was preparing to serve papers on the minister and director-general of Home Affairs, as well as the minister of police and director of deportations to demand the release of the family and their children, and to halt plans to deport them. Chohan agreed to remand the family into the lawyer’s custody.

* The family name has been changed to protect them.