No agreement yet on lifting South African visas for Zimbabweans
By Lance Guma
27 November 2006

State media reports suggesting the South African government had agreed to waive visa restrictions on Zimbabweans wishing to enter the country have been dismissed as untrue. Jacky Mashapa the acting head of communications in the South African Home Affairs department told the Business Day newspaper such a decision had not been made yet. Mashapu, ‘denied that a decision to waive visa requirements for Zimbabweans was made last week at a meeting of the Zimbabwe-SA joint permanent commission on defence and security,’ the paper said.

The Zimbabwe government wants the visas scrapped and has already made a formal request, which the South Africans say they are looking into. But as yet no decision has been made. Several media agencies picked up on the story and this raised hopes amongst many desperate Zimbabweans that they could finally escape grinding poverty in their homeland by crossing the border legally as opposed to what thousands do every year, crossing illegally and at great risk in the crocodile infested Limpopo River.
The Herald reported that South Africa had temporarily scrapped ‘stringent’ visa requirements but Mashapu told Business Day that the issue would be discussed at a meeting to be held next year. ‘The home affairs ministers of South Africa and Zimbabwe will continue to interact on unresolved issues around visa requirements until an agreement is reached on the matter,” he told the paper.

Daniel Molokela who coordinates the activities of Zimbabwean civic society groups based in South Africa says the visa issue was ‘neither here nor there.’ He says they are millions of Zimbabweans who have entered that country illegally and whether visas where scrapped or not, would not affect the trend. Molokela dismissed assertions the scrapping of visas would lead to a flood of Zimbabweans into South Africa saying there would be an initial flurry of people travelling but that the numbers would quickly go down. He says life in that country is not as easy as people make it out to be. Molokela argued it would help the fight against crime if South Africa made it easy for illegally based Zimbabweans to formalise their status.