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International Migration News - Volume #8 | |
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Africa
South Africa. On November 28, 150 asylum seekers protested outside the South African Department of Home Affairs offices in Johannesburg because many must wait weeks before having their applications processed, while they risk deportation as illegal aliens. The asylum seekers have no status in South Africa and are sometimes picked up by police and taken to the repatriation centers where they are deported back to their country of origin. The South African Home Affairs Office reported that a staffing shortage is the reason asylum seekers are not processed more quickly. UNHCR country representative Mengesha Kebede said that the South African government was in breech of its own Refugee Act, passed in 1998. He said that genuine asylum seekers are to be seen immediately and their status determined within 45 days. Zimbabwe. The Supreme Court in December 2000 ordered President Robert Mugabe to produce a workable land reform program in six months and effectively declared unlawful his drive to seize white-owned farms without paying compensation. The 4,500-member mainly white Commercial Farmers Union sued to block takeovers by war veterans. Libya. A top Libyan official in late November claimed that attacks upon black African immigrants in Libya were exaggerated. Press reports said that more than 130 died in the attacks, but Libyan officials say that only four died in the September fighting. An estimated 33,000 black Africans fled Libya and another 6,000 were deported to Nigeria and 3,000 to Ghana. An estimated 6,000 Sudanese were deported or fled. Moammar Kadafi blamed the violence on "hidden hostile hands" who were determined to undermine his plans for African unity. Some of the 5,000 Ghanians who returned from Libya said that "Libyans don't like blacks," citing cases of Libyan children covering their noses and calling Black workers monkeys. Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, in an effort to create a union of African nations, eased immigration rules, allowing the number of black African workers in Libya to grow to about one-sixth of the nation's population of more than five million. Violence against foreign workers erupted in September 2000, after an order by Libyan authorities to crack down on employment of foreign workers. Ethiopia. As many as a third of the students who have left Ethiopia to study on full scholarships abroad have not returned, according to official figures. This reinforces the conclusions of a study by the International Organization for Migration which found that Africa's 50 million migrants include many professionals who left their countries. Ethiopian nations tend to migrate permanently when they are sent for further education abroad. Popular destinations include the United States, Canada and western Europe. Ethiopia has one of the lowest number of doctors and scientists in the world and their highly qualified medical staff and technicians frequently move abroad. According to the UN's Economic Commission for Africa, 20,000 professionals leave Africa every year for developed countries to take advantage of better job opportunities and higher standards of living. Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest nations. A small number of Rastafarian Jamaicans have settled in Shashemene, Ethiopia, a market town of 50,000 people about 170 miles south of Addis Ababa. Rastafarians consider Haile Selassie, whose name before his 1930 coronation as emperor was Ras Tafari Makonnen, as the Messiah of the black man. The Rastafarians have moved to Ethiopia in a back-to-Africa movement. In 1955, 500 acres of the emperor's personal land in Shashemene were offered to "black people of the West'' to settle on. The first Rasafarians arrived in 1971 and at its height numbered around 2,500, most of whom were farmers. There are now about 1,000. The Ethiopian government says there are no restrictions on Rastafarians or other Caribbean blacks who want to visit, but if they wish to become residents, they must get work permits like other foreigners.
Abraham Fisseha, "Rasta
immigrants keep faith in Ethiopian 'homeland,'" Associated Press,
December 17, 2000. | |
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