The Department of Home Affairs is facing more legal action to re-open the Cape Town refugee reception office to alleviate the plight of thousands of newcomer asylum seekers, says a Mail & Guardian Online report. For the past six years, Cape-based asylum seekers have travelled at least twice a year to Refugee Reception Offices in Pretoria, Durban and Musina to receive proper documentation, putting their jobs and monetary resources at risk.

‘We are planning on taking action… and (we) will respond to their disregard for the court,’ says Miranda Madikane, director of the Scalabrini Centre, a non-profit organisation focused on migrants’ rights.

This after the department ignored a court order issued in September last year instructing it to ‘re-open and maintain a fully functional refugee reception office in or around the Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality’ by 31 March 2018 and communicate to the appellate each month to describe ‘what steps have been taken and what progress has been made to ensure compliance with the aforesaid order’.

Although the building is open for renewal permits for asylum seekers who registered at the Cape Town office prior to its closure in June 2012, it remains uncertain if or when the building will reopen to new applicants, leaving many undocumented migrants and their advocates uneasy.

Popo Mfubu, an attorney at the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town, believes it is unacceptable that the department is not adhering to the court order.

‘Living in a democratic society where the rule of the law must be accepted, we should not be existing in this territory where we don’t know when a court order will be complied with,’ Mfubu said.

‘That for me, is what I find rather alarming.’

Full Mail & Guardian Online report