As the first group of Ghanaian nationals leaves South Africa, the Head of Immigration and Law Enforcement at Home Affairs, Stephen van Neel, said the flight, initially scheduled to depart at 4am, was delayed due to security checks.
Last week, the Ghanaian government announced it would repatriate its citizens from South Africa after anti-immigrant protests had flared up again in the country.
Organisations, including March and March, and Operation Dudula, have taken to the streets demanding the deportation of undocumented foreigners in the country. The organisations have given undocumented foreigners a deadline of 30 June to leave the country, failing which there will be a national shutdown.
In response, the Ghanaian government decided to help its citizens leave the country. Last week, Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa Benjamin Anani Quashie said there were close to 16 000 Ghanaians in South Africa.
Ghanaians undocumented
The first group left on Wednesday after delays due to verification processes. Van Neel said officials worked through the night to verify the documents of those leaving. However, they still could not meet the 4am deadline, with most of those found with illegal papers.
“It is important that it was important for us that we go through a process of verifications and checks and make sure that those who are departing are indeed people that we can allow to depart,” Van Neel told SABC News.
“So there was indeed a need for us to go and look at the verification processes against some of our security systems. The Department of Home Affairs is one of those responsible for immigration procedures.
“So what happened is that we worked throughout the night, and we had hoped, as we had agreed with the embassy, that we would have the three hundred names of people who would depart. But what happened here is that, after a long night of working through the night, we found ourselves with some amendments to the list that we had to make sure were still in compliance with our requirements for people to depart.
“Well, what we have found is that of the three hundred individuals that are on that list, we only found ten of them being legal in the country. The rest of them are all illegal, without documents or actually not complying, and have been overstaying.”
Van Neel said that under the Immigration Act, those found to have overstayed their visit will be banned from the country and not allowed to return.
‘Government is working’
Amid criticism of the South African government not doing enough to curb illegal immigration, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi, said that was not the case.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika on Wednesday, Kubayi cited the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, which seeks to enforce the principle of the first country of safety for asylum seekers.
The government will also move refugee centres to the borders.
“Moving those means that, because initially what people would do, they would arrive at the border and say, I’m an asylum seeker, and they would be allowed to come in towards Marabastad, for example, in Pretoria,” said Kubayi.
“In the process, some of them would vanish, others would stay. And then while they’re waiting for the application, they get integrated into the society. Because as a country, we made a decision not to have refugee camps.
“Now the change would be that when you arrive, you are saying you are a refugee, you’ll be at the border. Your application, everything will be processed at the border point. And that’s where, if you are rejected, then you turn back from that point. That’s the improvement, and that’s the change that we’re doing as government. So it’s not correct to say that we have not done anything.”
