Executive Summary  South Africa receives more asylum seekers than any other country in the world with people mainly coming from Zimbabwe, the DRC, Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, as well as from countries further afield to escape poverty, insecurity and political turmoil.  Up to 1.4 million of South Africa’s refugees and asylum seekers are Zimbabwean, representing almost 15% of Zimbabwe’s population. Political instability and oppression and the continual threat of violence, poor health and social conditions, as well as the bleak economic prospects ahead are among the major factors that push many young Zimbabweans to emigrate. The slow and problematic implementation of the SADC facilitated Global Political Agreement in the country has fuelled renewed fears of more political turmoil and electoral violence in the near future.  With the increasing pressure that this process has placed on South Africa, deportation has become an instrument used by the SA Government to attempt to deter migration. Before 2009 South Africa was deporting about 300,000 Zimbabweans a year1.  After the outbreak of xenophobic violence that followed these deportations, on 3 April 2009, the Department of Home Affairs announced its intention to grant Zimbabweans in South Africa a twelve-month ‘special dispensation permit’ on the basis of the 2002 Immigration Act, section 31 (2)(b). This permit was meant to grant the right to legally live and work in the country. In addition to this the department announced a moratorium on deportations and a 90-day free visa for Zimbabweans entering South Africa to be implemented from May 2009.  In early October 2011 the South African Government announced that it would resume deportations.  Between October and December 2011 the Beitbridge Border reportedly handled 7,755 deportees, while an additional 7,177 Zimbabweans were deported between January and March 2012.  The findings of this report reveal that the deportation process involves an array of inconsistencies, violations and abuses consistent with other reports that have been carried out in this area over the last decade. This is despite the fact that South African law regulates the arrest, detention and deportation of illegal foreigners under the Constitution, the Immigration Act and accompanying regulations, and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act. 1 Tara Polzer, a senior researcher with the Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg – quoted in Irinnews http://www.irinnews.org/Report/91056/SOUTH-AFRICA-ZIMBABWE-Tussle-over-plannedresumption-of-deportations 5