Pretoria - With the deadline for Zimbabwean nationals to regularise their stay in South Africa fast approaching, Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has once again stressed that the 31 December cut-off date would not be extended.
"No one should harbor any illusions that this process will be extended. There will be no extensions. The deadline is not movable," Dlamini Zuma said.
She was speaking during her visit to the Home Affairs office in Harrison Street, Johannesburg.
The minister urged those who were still waiting for their passports from the Zimbabwean government to submit their applications with their identity documents or birth certificates so that they can be recorded in the system before the deadline.
The department's offices have been flooded with applications. The Tirro office in Pretoria had received at least 800 applications daily since last week, Dlamini Zuma said.
By 17 December, the department had received 124 314 applications and had made a decision on 40 092.
The department has doubled the number of staff in the office where the applications are to be processed and also increased the shifts they will work to ensure that the applications are processed speedily.
"There will be some people who have applied some time back but have not yet been processed. But when we saw there was a backlog accumulating, we implemented these measures - the two shift system and increased the number of officials in the back office and adjudicating process."
A new team has also been put in place to look at the current applications to ensure they did not become part of the backlog.
After the applications have been processed, the department would be able to identify those Zimbabwean nationals that are in the country illegally and begin deporting them.
"Only then, once we have processed every application and we know that anyone who has tried to be legalised has been documented, then we will begin (deporting). If there are people who did not apply and are not in any of our processes, then these people will be in South Africa illegally," the minister explained.
Dlamini Zuma would not speculate on when the processing of the applications would be completed, saying it would depend on how many applications were received by the end of December.
Also, applications would only be able to be processed once Zimbabwean nationals had submitted all relevant documents.
