Western Cape Premier Alan Winde says the province has concluded the co-ordinated humanitarian support operation that assisted undocumented migrants who voluntarily elected to return to their countries of origin.
All temporary facilities, including the repatriation site in Epping, have now closed.
Winde says after verification, registration and logistical planning, thousands of people who spent the past week outside the Department of Home Affairs and Refugee Centre, are now making their way to Musina for repatriation.
“The buses finally have left all of these halls and all of these spaces during the night and into the early hours of this morning, and all of these facilities are now closed. The Epping site is now also closed and will be reverting back to normal business as of Monday morning. And so, of course, anybody who still finds themselves perhaps without the correct documentation and they are a foreign national in the region, they are asked to go to the embassies, their consulates, or to the home affairs offices. So it is quite clear that these facilities are now closed.”
Musina Repatriation Centre
Meanwhile, the Home Affairs Department says that more than 3 400 undocumented migrants have been repatriated. They left the Musina temporary repatriation Centre in Limpopo for Malawi and Zimbabwe on Saturday.
The department’s manager at the centre Albert Matsaung says the majority of the processed migrants are Malawians.
“We managed to process 3 416 people within this facility, … 53 busses were used to relocate or move all these people to their countries.”
Large-scale repatriation operations in Musina highly successful, says Home Affairs
Unwilling to go
Born and raised in South Africa, two undocumented Zimbabwean siblings are unwilling to be repatriated to Zimbabwe.
18-year-old Lorraine Ncube and her 16-year-old brother Lawrence say they fear an uncertain future if they are deported.
Their parents are Zimbabwean and they have lived in South Africa their entire lives.
They were recently chased away from their home at Moletjie outside Polokwane by community members, following the march against undocumented immigrants across South Africa.
They are now among thousands of undocumented immigrants being processed at the Musina Repatriation Centre in Limpopo.
Lorraine and Lawrence say they have no home or support system in Zimbabwe. They have expressed sadness.
“My future is broken” undocumented migrant speaks out
