Comments by Director-General Mkuseli Apleni
Good afternoon colleagues. You will recall that we are really committed as a department to ensuring we brief you regularly regarding the Zimbabwean documentation project.
You will also recall that we are co-dependent upon the Zimbabwean government to meet our deadline of 30 June 2011 to conclude this process – this pertains to the issue of the production of passports. We therefore held discussions with our Zimbabwean counterparts to discuss this issue and how we are going to go forward with this issue.
We have received 275 622 applications from Zimbabwean nationals to be documented in South Africa. Out of this, we needed to know how many applications are accompanied by passports and how many require passports.We are still dealing with this process. We therefore decided to check with our counterparts to ask how many passport applications they had received. According to what we have been told, the Zimbabweans have received 58 100 applications for passports. Of this, 16 427 passports have been issued.
There is therefore the assumption that if 58 100 have applied for passports and we in South African have received 275 622 applications for documentation, then the remaining applications do not have passports. However, it is not certain that the rest of the applicants did not have passports. You will recall that in the last briefing, we said that we will also be providing daily updates to our Zimbabwean counterparts regarding applications not accompanied by passports following the adjudication process. As at last week, we have already counted, on average, 350 applications per day which do not have passports.
The discussions therefore centred around how this matter could be addressed and how soon people could receive passports. We already know that the Zimbabwean consulate in Cape Town has been closed. So, we discussed this process. We have now agreed that the Zimbabwean Ambassador would go back and look at the content of our discussions with his government. The Zimbabwean government will come back to us by tomorrow on the strategy to be implemented to ensure that people are issued with passports especially if of the 275 622 applications we are seeing an average of 350 per day without passports.They will also have to tell us how those who have not yet applied for passports can be assisted.
On our side, as the South African government, we are still proceeding with our analysis of the applications. We are also interested in assessing how many applicants per day require passports according to a provincial breakdown – for instance, 20 in KwaZulu-Natal, two in Cape Town, 150 in Gauteng.Based on this we will be able to see how we will deal with this issue. We wanted to brief you on this process because this is the only outstanding issue for us as government, how do we deal with the outstanding passports?We also have very clear deadlines and timeframes. We must be able to ascertain by end January 2011 the strategy to be implemented to ensure Zimbabwean nationals receive passports and their capacity for production.
What was most important from the meeting was that no applicant who does not have a passport, will be penalised because this is a joint process between the South African and Zimbabwean passports. We will also now be proceeding to arrange a meeting between the Ministers of Home Affairs of the two countries. The date will be determined by the response we receive tomorrow so that the plan for implementation can be consolidated.
That was it for our discussions today.
Questions and answers
Question: Director-General (DG), can you clarify the figure of 350?
Answer: Yes, it is 350 applications per day that we are adjudicating without passports. We are recording this data on a daily basis and we are providing it also on a daily basis to the Zimbabwean embassy so they can determine how to deal with this matter.
Question: DG, you mentioned that the Zimbabwean government has closed its office in Cape Town. Was the recent incident of violence in Cape Town related to this matter?
Answer: No, we reiterate as the South African government that we cannot condone violence in any form in any manifestation. But I have talked to the PASSOP representative in Cape Town who has informed me that the victim has lodged a complaint with the police and this matter is now being dealt with and investigated at that level.
Question: DG, what have the Zimbabweans said about their ability to produce passports because even at a rate of 500 a day that they are able to produce, looking at the numbers, it will be difficult to meet your deadline of end June 2011?
Answer: This is why we wanted to meet with the Zimbabweans. We wanted to look at what figures they have and reconcile them with what we have. With them receiving only 58 100 applications for passports, and us having received 275 622 applications, you can see the difference is huge. However, as I have already said not all of the 275 622 applications we have received required passports. Some would already have passports. However, on a daily basis we are keeping track of those who do not have passports. This is why we met with the Zimbabweans today. It would not help us to meet with them at the end of June 2011. We therefore now have an agreement with them that they will come back to us with a strategy on how to deal with this matter. We must also be able to look at how the provincial breakdown of this matter. This may then prompt the Zimbabweans to take action, perhaps even to reopen their office in Cape Town.
We have again today reiterated our offer of assistance. But we have now met at senior officials’ level; we will then take the discussions to the ministers where we will be able to say that at a rate of production of 500 passports per day we will not be able to meet our timeframes. But we want to assure you we are taking the matter of the outstanding passports seriously. And to reiterate, we are committed to ensuring that no one must suffer because they do not have a passport.
