NATIONAL NEWS - The Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) and the Zimbabwe Immigration Federation are proceeding with court action against Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi over the scrapping of Zimbabwean Exemption Permits (ZEPs).

The court challenge will proceed even though the minister recently announced an extended “grace period” of another six months for some 178 000 permit holders to “regularise their status” or leave the country, until June 2023.

The initial deadline to apply for waivers or alternative visas was the end of December this year.

The minister first announced in December 2021 that the ZEP, introduced 13 years ago to regularise the situation of Zimbabweans already living, working and studying in South Africa, was to be scrapped.

In media interviews, the minister said the six-month extension was necessary because so few permit holders had made applications for waivers and other visas and it was on the advice of a special ministerial committee he appointed to oversee the process.

The HSF, in its application filed in the Pretoria High Court, says the blanket decision not to renew ZEPs was “hasty, untransparent and ill-considered”.

The federation wants the court to rule that the decision was unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid, and that it must be reviewed and remitted back to the minister for reconsideration “using a fair process” involving meaningful engagement with those affected and civil society.

The federation is seeking an interdict, restraining the government respondents, including the minister, the department of Home Affairs, the police and border control, from detaining or deporting any holder of a ZEP, pending a further application, still to be filed, to review and set aside the minister’s decision.

In opposing the HSF application, Director-General of the department of Home Affairs Livhuwani Tommy Makhode said the grace period had been granted precisely for the purpose of allowing permit holders to make representations.