To: Department of Home Affairs, Minister Leon Schreiber and Director General Livhuwani Tommy Makhode

Demand accountability for Home Affairs homophobia

A judge slammed Home Affairs for rejecting an asylum application by a man who fled Chad after being imprisoned for being gay. GroundUp reported on the case, where the judge said the Home Affairs official’s reasons for rejecting the application were “unintelligible, illogical babble” and problematic. The judge also stated the Home Affairs official’s reasons for rejecting the application reflected a “profound misunderstanding of the legal standards… in the Refugees Act” [1]. 

Homophobic officials at Home Affairs have been an issue, but in the past the Home Affairs Minister has taken some action on issues of homophobia [2] [3]. In this case, the Home Affairs official failed to recognise the dignity of the person seeking asylum and the persecution they faced for being gay. The official acknowledged that homosexuality is illegal in Chad, but rejected the application, claiming the judiciary was independent of government. This is unacceptable. The immigration official blatantly ignored South Africa’s constitutional and international obligations to safeguard LGBTQIA+ rights and offered no empathy or consideration of the risks of persecution or harm once the man returned back home. In failing to do their job properly, the official reinforced the testimony of many LGBTI refugees and asylum seekers, who have experienced homophobia at Home Affairs [4].   

We demand: 

  • Disciplinary action against the Refugee Status Determination Officer who rejected the asylum application, and for his previous decisions on similar matters to be reviewed, and disciplinary action to be taken. 
  • We call out the DG and Minister of Home Affairs for using state resources to fight this matter in court and call for them to publicly apologise.
  • We demand that the Minister and DG publicly commit to tackling homophobia in Home Affairs.


Why is this important?

It is important for Home Affairs to understand that they are dealing with actual people’s lives. This is a life-altering case and was supposed to be treated like one. Officials must act fairly, lawfully, and in alignment with our constitutional principles. The Minister and the DG must be ashamed for even allowing this case to get to court. 


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