{"id":237537,"date":"2022-09-19T15:47:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T13:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains\/"},"modified":"2022-09-19T15:47:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T13:47:31","slug":"zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabweans trying to leave SA not being turned back: Home Affairs explains"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Bernard%20Chiguvare\/beightbridge_border_in_musina.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Zimbabweans at Beitbridge border in Limpopo. Archive photo: Bernard Chiguvare<\/p>\n<p>On 15 September <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/home-affairs-silent-over-treatment-of-zimbabweans-at-beitbridge-border\/\">we reported<\/a> that Zimbabweans trying to leave South Africa were being turned back at Beitbridge border, apparently by the new Border Management Authority guards in Musina, Limpopo.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>As a result, people we spoke to were confused and eventually crossed the border through unofficial routes that can be dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>Despite attempts since 5 September asking the Department of Home Affairs to explain or clarify, we had no response.<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks later, the department has now replied, saying \u201cwe appeal to the propaganda mill to stop confusing people\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBorder Guards are doing access control duties at the Beitbridge Border Post and they direct the Zimbabweans wanting to go back to their home country to the relevant queues so that they can be documented in accordance with the Immigration Act. This means that they need to be fingerprinted and have their demographic details taken.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHowever, there are people who have refused to be documented on their departure. They believe that now that they are going back home, nobody needs to ask them any questions at our border,\u201d reads the statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody will be allowed to just waltz through our border to and fro without being documented. There are no exceptions in this regard, whether you go through a land port, sea port or an airport. This is regardless of your nationality,\u201d it quotes Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no way South Africa will refuse anybody from going back home. But similarly, South Africa can\u2019t just allow anybody to move in and out of the country without it being recorded anywhere,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zimbabweans at Beitbridge border in Limpopo. Archive photo: Bernard Chiguvare On 15 September we reported that Zimbabweans trying to leave South Africa were being turned back at Beitbridge border, apparently by the new Border Management Authority guards in Musina, Limpopo. As a result, people we spoke to were confused and eventually crossed the border through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-237537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/zimbabweans-trying-to-leave-sa-not-being-turned-back-home-affairs-explains.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}