The Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) has hailed the decision by South Africa’s highest court to refuse the Minister of Home Affairs leave to appeal against a ruling that successfully challenged the decision to terminate the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit Regime (ZEP).
“The Constitutional Court last week refused the minister’s application for leave to appeal the ZEP case, bringing to a close our challenge of the unlawful termination of the ZEP regime, which affected some 178 000 people who had been living, working, and building families in South Africa for almost 15 years,” it said.
In April 2009, South Africa established the Dispensation of Zimbabwean Permit (DZP) to regularise the status of thousands of Zimbabwean nationals who had fled political and economic instability in their country, mostly between 2007 and 2009.
The special exemption was reissued in 2014, and then again in 2017, as the ZEP.
Those applying for the ZEP had to show that they had the financial means to support themselves in South Africa and that they had no criminal record.
HSF executive director, Naseema Fakir, said the Constitution enshrines that every person living within the country’s borders deserved to be treated with fairness and respect for their dignity, and that was the principle that every government sworn in under the Constitution was bound to honour.
“The government cannot operate in obscurity. Our democracy requires that administrative decisions like this, that adversely affect people’s rights must be opened to public scrutiny and comment,” Fakir said.
“This is so that the government can exercise its power with accountability and with all the information it needs to treat people fairly and in accordance with the Constitution.”
The HSF was represented in court by global law firm, DLA Piper.
Nicolas Patrick, pro bono and responsible business partner at DLA Piper, said they were proud to have joined the HSF in challenging the termination of the ZEP regime.
“This landmark decision achieves justice for thousands of Zimbabwean legal residents in South Africa and upholds the progressive spirit of the South African Constitution, one of the finest in the world,” he said.
BUSINESS REPORT