South Africa’s broken asylum system is to blame for leaving thousands of foreign nationals undocumented, resulting in tensions to mount between refugees and local citizens, APA learnt on Thursday.
There are more than 50,000 people seeking asylum in South Africa, a figure said to be the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, the UN said.
But rights groups said the number of people granted refugee status has remained unchanged for the past decade.
According to the London-based Amnesty International, red tape in the dysfunctional asylum system has left the refugees in limbo and at the mercy of misunderstanding with locals.
“In persisting with a broken system that leaves those trying to claim asylum undocumented and in limbo, the South African government is inflaming tensions between South Africans and fellow Africans living in the country,” said Shenilla Mohamed, executive director of Amnesty International South Africa.
Mohamed added: “It’s shocking that a country such as South Africa trivialises the vulnerability of those fleeing desperate circumstances.”
The official commented a day after hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers camped at the Cape Town offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees were brutalised by the police.
The protestors were demanding to be moved out of South Africa due to threats against them from their xenophobic local neighbours.
Responding to the charges, South Africa’s Home Affairs Ministry’s acting director-general Thulani Mavuso said the country had seen an unprecedented number of people applying for asylum in 2018 and 2019.
While these applications were given due attention, the asylum seekers wound up appealing when their applications were unsuccessful, thereby clogging up the system, he said.
South Africa is home to 268,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to official statistics.
NM/jn/APA