Judgment reserved in Home Affairs application to appeal ZEP ruling

The application was heard on Monday.

The department is seeking to challenge the court’s findings that the termination of ZEP regime by the government is unlawful.

In June, a full bench of the high court criticised the department and its minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, for not following proper procedure in terminating the regime, which allows more than 178,000 Zimbabweans to stay and work in South Africa.

The Helen Suzman Foundation challenged Motsoaledi's decision to terminate the ZEPs in April.

"Pending the judgment of this court in the main application under Part B, the respondents are interdicted and restrained from arresting, issuing an order for deportation or detaining any holder of the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit for the purposes of deportation in terms of section 34 of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002 for any reason related to him or her not having any valid exemption certificate in his or her passport," the ruling stated.

The judgment also prevents the department from denying entry or departure into or from South Africa, leading to a decision to extend the grace period of the ZEPs to the end of December.

Judge Colleen Collis said on Monday that judgment would be handed down after recess.

"We are going to reserve our judgment on those two applications for leave to appeal, and then we will hand it down as soon as it is ready. Parties must bear in mind that the court is now on recess, so we accommodated the hearing of this application because you had set through the request during term already, but we will only hand down the judgment once the new term commences. We will advise the parties, and it will be uploaded into case lines."

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