African Asylum: Wits University - Refugee Law Clinic

Wits University is South Africa's main English-speaking university. It is situated in the suburb of Braamfontein, to the north-west of the CBD. The grounds of the university are large, spread over East and West campuses, with a combination of grand, stately old buildings and hideous 1970s extensions, much like many Australian universities. The grounds are very green, peppered with public art, and surrounded by high, spiked fences and security guards at each entrance. Getting in here is as much a physical challenge as it is an academic one.

For my three week visit I am based at the Wits Law Clinic, a predominantly student-run legal clinic providing legal advice and representation on a wide range of legal matters - including refugee law, family law, forced evictions, property and tort (the head of the tort law department tells me most of their cases are against the police). All of the law students at Wits are required to spend the final year of their course assisting in one of the clinic's areas of practice, and a few will go on to work here as Candidate Attorneys (a bit like articles, a year of practical experience that graduates must do to be admitted to practice). My main hosts here at the clinic are Daven, the head of the Refugee Law Unit, and Ayesha, one of its Candidate Attorneys. Both have been exceedingly welcoming, assuring me that now I have friends in South Africa I have nothing to worry about.

Every Monday the Refugee Law unit runs a two-hour legal clinic, where asylum seekers and refugees come to seek legal advice. The clinic assists people not only with their applications for asylum, but with the many other legal barriers faced by refugees in South Africa - difficulties obtaining permits, identity cards, documents that will allow them to travel, and access to education and work. Daven tells me that much of the work of the clinic is taken up with going to court to get orders compelling DHA (the Department of Home Affairs, responsible for dealing with refugee affairs) to do something it should have done already. When DHA still refuses to act on the court order, the clinic returns to court to launch contempt proceedings. Then, sometimes, something gets done. In fact, this strategy resulted in a big win for the clinic recently, when it received an order compelling the government to start issuing South African travel documents (similar to a passport). The right of recognised refugees to a travel document is guaranteed by the South African Refugees Act and the Immigration Act, but DHA has been refusing to issue them for some three years or so. The impact of the order is huge - it means, for example, that a young Congolese client of the clinic, whose two children went missing when she fled her home, can now return to the DRC to search for them, without losing her refugee status and being refused re-entry into South Africa.

Today I accompanied Ayesha on her clinic duties. The clinic is quiet at the moment, as the students who usually staff it are yet to arrive back from the summer break. Incredibly, potential clients seem to know this and so the queue for assistance is not long. Ayesha warned me that I would see a 'firmer' side of her at the clinic, and she was not wrong. She was adept at pushing through the emotional stories presented to her to identify the kernel of the legal problem each story entailed, and swift and direct in telling asylum seekers and refugees what she could, and could not, do for them. She did not hesitate to chastise her clients for failing to renew their permits in time and forgetting to bring her the documents she had requested. She says: if a doctor tells you not to eat before surgery, you don't eat and then turn up and expect the doctor to work miracles.

But trying to do the right thing is only half the picture in South Africa. One woman who attended today's clinic had been to the DHA office several times in the last few months to renew her asylum seeker permit, a temporary permit that allows an asylum seeker to remain lawfully in South Africa until his or her claim for refugee status has been decided. Each time she arrived at the office she was told to come back tomorrow, or next week, or next month. As this went on, her current permit expired. The last time she tried to renew it she was told that as her permit had expired she would have to pay a fine of 3000 rand (about AU$320), money she does not have, before it could be renewed. Ayesha explains to the woman that she needs proof of the fine - she needs to know whether it is a real fine, or just a corrupt official demanding a bribe. Until she knows, there is little she can do, and so the young woman remains unlawfully in the country and subject to arrest and deportation at any time.

The final client for the day was another woman from the DRC - DRC nationals make up about 90% of the clinic's clients at the moment, due to the continuing and ruthless dictatorship of Joseph Kabila. This woman came to South Africa with her children after her husband was killed and Ayesha is helping her to appeal against DHA's decision to refuse her refugee status. At the end of the appointment the young woman hugs Ayesha, and tells her not to worry; God will look after them and make the imigration officials good and in the end everything will be ok.