Crackdown on dodgy immigration permits gaining momentum – but is it too late?

Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi has received the report of the task team he set up in March to review permanent residency permits (PRP) and citizenship issued since 2004.

His office said the minister was handed the report two weeks ago and is expected to make an announcement soon.

The need to review the permits was triggered by cases involving high-profile people investigated by the Department of Home Affairs’ Counter Corruption Unit. The unit investigates wrongdoing by departmental officials.

In February, the minister revealed that Enlightened Christian Gathering leader Shepherd Bushiri and his wife, Mary, were in South Africa illegally. 

The Counter Corruption Unit has established that 66% of the cases it looked into involved immigration permits.

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Motsoaledi said that in November 2020, during a top-level investigation, he was shocked when 14 members of the department’s permit section signed a petition demanding that the Counter Corruption Unit stop investigating their errors.

The minister said it was this admission that strengthened his resolve to have a more transparent system for the issuing of permits.

Other permits on Motsoaledi’s radar are corporate visas, especially in the mining sector, business visas, professional/critical skills visas, retired person’s visas as well as study visas.

Official stripped of SA citizenship

Last week, home affairs official Mbemba Pierre Mahinga was dealt a blow when the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed his application to stop the Home Affairs Department from stripping him of his SA citizenship. Mahinga is a Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) national.

The 55-year-old arrived in South Africa in 1996 as an asylum seeker but withdrew his asylum application and instead applied for permanent residency after marrying a South African in 1999.

The permit was granted in 2001 and two years later, Mahinga obtained citizenship but Home Affairs claims he engaged in a marriage of convenience to get citizenship.

He worked as a clerk at the Home Affairs refugee reception centre in Pretoria from 2004 and was promoted to assistant director in 2006.

Mahinga has been engaged in a legal tussle with the Home Affairs Department since 2016 after his citizenship was revoked and his employment was terminated.

According to the department, the permit review was undertaken to ensure that each permit has been issued to a qualifying person as immigration laws were designed to facilitate economic development and encourage social stability. 

Damage already done

Solly Masilela, political analyst and social commentator at the Vukani Kusile Foundation, welcomed Motsoaledi’s intervention, although he said it was too little too late as the damage to the credibility of South African immigration system had already been done.

“It will take time for the clean-up to be a success because corruption and maladministration of the immigration laws and regulations is too entrenched and linked to other departments, such as the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco). It is a step in the right direction though,” he said.

Masilela added that corruption has seriously knocked South Africa’s immigration system, to the point that the documents the country issued were not worth the paper they were printed on.

siphom@citizen.co.za

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