As South Africans continue to slowly return to local soil, Ukrainians have called on the government to allow visa-free travel to help evacuate the ongoing war zone. Kaone Molefe was one of the South Africans lucky enough to escape the Russian invasion. He had to go from Kiev to the Polish border post to Rzeszow and from there take the train to Berlin, from where he finally managed to return home. The spokesman for the Ukrainian Association of South Africa, Dzvinka Kachur, has called on South Africa to seek asylum for Ukrainians after 1.5 million people fled that country. She…
As South Africans continue to slowly return to local soil, Ukrainians have called on the government to allow visa-free travel to help evacuate the ongoing war zone.
Kaone Molefe was one of the South Africans lucky enough to escape the Russian invasion. He had to go from Kiev to the Polish border post to Rzeszow and from there take the train to Berlin, from where he finally managed to return home.
The spokesman for the Ukrainian Association of South Africa, Dzvinka Kachur, has called on South Africa to seek asylum for Ukrainians after 1.5 million people fled that country. She said there were 6,000 Ukrainians living in South Africa.
“So it’s not random people who sign up, it’s relatives who can come visit,” she said.
Kachur said those who had managed to flee and had relatives in South Africa could not come to South Africa because they had received messages to register in their country of origin.
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“We ask for [for refugees] to fly visa-free with an airline and apply for the visa in South Africa.”
Sally Gandar, head of Strategic Litigation and Advocacy at the Refugee Rights Clinic for the Refugee Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town, said they had not been approached for help by Ukrainians seeking asylum in South Africa.
Gandar said South Africa was a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Conventionas well as the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Convention of 1969.
This meant that South Africa was obliged to provide protection to anyone who falls under the definition of refugee status.
Section 3(b) of the Refugee Act states that a person must be recognized as a refugee if they are forced to leave their country “as a result of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or other events seriously disturbing public order” and if their government couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them.
Gandar said this usually involved getting an asylum transit visa on arrival, which gave a person five days to submit their asylum application at a refugee reception center.
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