The Home Affairs Department says the establishment of specialised immigration courts will help ease overcrowding in the country’s prisons and detention centres.
The department says lengthy deportation processes have resulted in undocumented foreign nationals being held for extended periods at facilities such as the Lindela Repatriation Centre, contributing to overcrowding.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the establishment of the courts on Sunday as part of a broader set of measures to address illegal migration.
Home Affairs Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza said the courts would significantly reduce the time and costs associated with the current deportation process.
“We really welcome the introduction of the specialised labour courts. As you will know, for deportation processes to be completed we have to make sure we arrest the person working with the police and then we have to take them to a magistrate court because that’s what the law requires us to do. Only then we can then start effecting deportations…”
“Which means that we then carry a lot of costs in Lindela while still holding this person taking them through the legal systems. So those specialised immigration courts will help us a lot,” Nzuza said.
Nzuza also welcomed the President’s announcement of 10 000 new labour inspectors, saying reducing the demand for undocumented foreign labour was key to addressing illegal migration.
He said the department was already conducting joint operations with the South African Police Service and the Department of Labour, and that these would be intensified with a focus on establishing a coordinated, institutionalised response at a district level.
On the question of identity document backlogs, Nzuza said there were currently no backlogs, adding that the department had issued a record number of more than two million smart ID cards this year.
The deputy minister confirmed that the green barcoded ID book would be phased out, describing it as a vulnerable, paper-based document that was easily manipulated.
He said the smart ID card offered significantly stronger security features, including biometric data and facial recognition captured at the back end of the department’s systems. He urged South Africans who still held green barcoded IDs to apply for smart ID cards as soon as possible, warning that the green ID would eventually no longer be recognised as a valid form of identification.
On the planned relocation of refugee reception centres to border posts, Nzuza said the move was aimed at processing asylum applications before admitting individuals into the country, rather than allowing them to integrate into society while their cases were pending.
He said a significant number of people presenting as asylum seekers were in fact economic migrants, and that processing applications at the border would help address that problem.
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