SOUTH Africa’s Department of Home Affairs plans to start consultations over the fate of about 230 000 migrants from Zimbabwe and Lesotho after a court thwarted its attempt to deport them.
The department will now hold consultations without a “pre-determined outcome,” Leon Schreiber, who was appointed as home affairs minister late last month, said in an interview Wednesday.
The presence of migrants in South Africa is a fraught political issue in a country with an unemployment rate of more than 30% and a government that’s struggled to supply basic services.
The country has been hit by periodic xenophobic riots since 2008 and the decision to end the special permits for those Zimbabwean and Lesotho nationals had been portrayed by some critics as an attempt to bolster support for the then ruling party, the African National Congress. – moneyweb.co.za