Lawsuit aims to force state to pay foster-care grants for children with asylum in South Africa
April 18, 2005

By Tania Broughton and Shaun Smillie

Alandmark case before the Pretoria High Court could see the government being forced to pay support grants due to refugee and foreign children.

Further, this could see social spending soar.

In a “class action” lawsuit launched last week, three KwaZulu Natal-based Congolese refugees – Coco Bishogo, Musenge Langa and Maulu Baangi – are taking on the ministries of social development and home affairs.

They are demanding the R570-a-month foster-care grant for the children they look after, and are also collectively seeking more than R66 000 in “backpay”.

It is a case they are likely to win, believes Selwyn Jehoma, chief director of grant systems and administration in the national Ministry of Social Development.

“I believe they do have a strong case and that the court will probably grant them that status.”

“I also know that the minister is sympathetic to such cases where foster care has been given by the courts,” he told The Star last night.

Jehoma said that according to the law, foreigners and refugees could not be rejected or disqualified from being given a state foster grant on grounds of their nationality.

The problem, however, was that provincial departments were not giving them child-support grants.

Jehoma conceded that the court case could have serious fiscal implications for his department – and the taxpayer – but it was unknown exactly how much the burden of caring for foreign indigent children would be.

“We don’t know how many refugees there are and how many children will be placed in foster care.”

“It is a situation that we have been worried about for a while. There is also the other issue – it could provide an additional incentive to foreigners to come to South Africa.”

The three Congolese have said that in terms of South African law and the constitution, they were entitled to social security and assistance. In particular, they were entitled to the foster-care grant, given regardless of nationality.

Despite this, refugee families – many of whom are poor and desperate – had been repeatedly denied the grant.

The government’s excuse for this, in a nutshell, was that it had computer problems.

Under the foster-child grant scheme, a court places a child into the care of foster parents, who can then apply for a R570 monthly grant.

The lawyer for the three Congolese, Sheldon Magardie of Johannesburg’s Legal Resources Centre, said the government was not taking the problem seriously enough.

He said many refugee children arrived in South Africa “unaccompanied”. A number were orphans and were taken in by relatives or others from their small communities.

Bishogo, a hairdresser, is a registered foster parent to her 14- and 11-year-old siblings.

Langa, an informal trader who sells beaded necklaces, fosters her dead sister’s five children, whose ages range from 4 to 11.

Unemployed Baangi cares for orphaned relatives – a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.

Fleeing the DRC because of the ongoing civil war, Baangi arrived in 1999 and Bishogo and Langa in 2002.

They all have refugee status but are relying on the charity of others.

In affidavits, they say they applied for the foster-care grants a year ago. Since then they have given various excuses, some encouraging and others “vague and contradictory”.

First they were told there was a problem with their 13-digit “refugee” ID number and that they were not on the population register. After being told that the problem had been resolved, they discovered that it had not.

In papers, Bishogo said: “We fostered these children out of compassion and commitment … we have been rewarded by being shoved contemptuously from pillar to post.”

“Our children are near to being impoverished … there are days when we have to seek assistance from relief agencies. Our dignity has lost its lustre.”

She said this “collective shrug of the shoulder” from the government was not good enough.

The application against the ministers of home affairs and social development, and their directors-general, is for an order that they implement administrative infrastructure to deal with their and other refugees’ applications.

Department of Home Affairs spokesperson Leslie Mashokwe said last night he did not know of the case and was unwilling to comment.

[email protected]

Source: The Star (Johannesburg)
URL: http://www.star.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=12…/p>