SA Home Affairs to defend scrapping of Zimbabwe exemption permit in court

The Department of Home Affairs' legal team will appear before the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday to defend a controversial move to scrap the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) programme.

Three civil society organisations are currently challenging the move that was announced by department minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, in 2021.

It is set to leave in the lurch, some 178,000 Zimbabwean nationals who were living and working in South Africa on the strength of ZEPs, some for more than a decade.

The three challenges, which are all being heard together, got underway on Tuesday, when the court heard from the Helen Suzman Foundation and the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA).

And on Wednesday, the Department of Home Affairs will respond.

"At the core of this case is the notion that these 180,000 people, who have lived here lawfully for over a decade, should be afforded some opportunity to have a voice in the decision as to whether their stay in this country should be terminated," argued Advocate David Simonsz for CoRMSA in court.

In their case, the consortium, together with the Helen Suzman Foundation, maintained that proper public consultation wasn't undertaken before the decision to terminate the ZEP programme was made.

They also said the decision represented a breach of the constitutional rights of ZEP holders and their children and was taken without any regard for the impact on this community.

The organisations also said that the economic and political situation in Zimbabwe had not changed, which was the impetus for the introduction of the ZEP programme, in the first place.

The Department of Home Affairs, however, is opposing this case.