Migration News - August 1999

August 1999

• Sunday Times (South Africa 30/08) reports that although a final decision is yet to be made, there has been a landmark legal challenge in the Constitutional Court in a case brought against the Minister of Home Affairs by the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality. According to the coalition, the Aliens Control Act, which makes immigration easier for foreign spouses of South Africans, discriminates against gay and lesbian life-partners when one of the partners is foreign. The Cape Town High Court ruled in February that the law was unconstitutional and therefore invalid, but that order must be confirmed by the Constitutional Court before coming into effect.

• PANA (Blantyre 30/08) reports that due to increasing incidents of passport forgeries, Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau has begun an investigation of the Malawi Immigration Department. According to Gilton Chiwaula, director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, many non-Malawians, especially Asians, are holding Malawian passports after having obtained them illegally through immigration officials. In early August, a senior immigration official was arrested for colluding with other officials to "corruptly issue the passports."

• AFP (Harare 29/08) reports that within the last six months, about 6,000 Zimbabwean "illegal immigrants" have been deported. According to Castin Nyamutamba, the officer in charge of the border police in Plumtree, most people "netted" as they cross the border are looking for work. AFP added that last year, 18 Zimbabweans suffocated to death in the back of an unventilated container truck while being smuggled into Botswana in search of work.

• The Nation (Nairobi 28/08) reports that eleven "illegal immigrants" living in Muthaiga - two Russian, four Ukrainian and five Chinese women - were deported for "practicing immoral activities".

• Xinhua General Overseas News Service (26/08) reports that Tanzania’s National Eligibility Committee (NEC) has granted refugee status to 5,650 Rwandan asylum seekers, according to UNHCR’s information bulletin Milestone. At the beginning of 1998, when the Tanzanian government appealed to Rwandan asylum seekers to register with the NEC, the number of Rwandans registered was 6,543 - 2,778 of which were in Tanzania because they were not repatriated during the mass return of December 1996, and 3,765 of which were directly from Rwanda. 146 Rwandans, also from the December 1996 caseload, were not granted refugee status.

• PANA (Gobabis, Namibia 26/08) reports Namibian immigration officials have deported 60 of 100 "illegal immigrants" arrested in the Omahake region since January. According to Gabriel Smion, a senior immigration officer, they had been working in Otjinene, Epukiro, and Reitfontien as cheap labourers. Also, Simion said he was concerned that some of the "illegal immigrants" had voters’ registration cards for upcoming elections and had voted in both local and regional elections, using voters’ registration cards obtained after their employers made sworn statements in support of them.

• PANA (Blantyre 21/08) reports 25 Eritreans were arrested last Sunday for entering Malawi with fake passports. The Eritreans claimed to have purchased their visas from the Malawian embassy in Addis Ababa, which Malawian foreign affairs and international relations officials denied, according to immigration officer David Kambilonjo. Ziddy Medi, Secretary for External Affairs and International Relations, suggested the visas had been purchased from a travel agency. On Friday, the 25 Eritreans caused a six-hour delay in their flight when they refused to board the Ethiopian Airlines plane. According to a police officer, "The police had to use excessive force to put the shouting Eritreans on board".

Updated November 2, 1999