South Africa: Asylum Seeker Claims Intimidation

10 September 2013

A Zimbabwean woman, Faith Muchina (not her real name), 48, claims that officials at the Cape Town Department of Home Affairs (DHA) intimidated her into changing her application for refugee status to cite economic and not political reasons. As a result she lost her asylum seekers status in October 2012 and is now illegally in the country. She has now been in the country for eight years.

Muchina says in Zimbabwe she was continuously harassed from 2002 to 2005 by ZANU-PF supporters and war veterans. In 2003, she was at home with her 17-year-old son when she was attacked. Her tuck shop was looted. Her son was badly injured; she was stabbed on the shoulder by one of 38 men that attacked her. Vomiting blood she crawled to the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) who called an ambulance, but refused to open a case against the ZANU-PF supporters.

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