The South African government has said it will not accommodate any refugees from Afghanistan, even if they are eventually to be sent to a third country.
Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for the Department for International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO), said that the government was not in a position to accommodate the refugees. He said that South Africa also had a significant number of refugees and was ‘seized’ with addressing their needs.
Monyela said that the refugees were best served by staying in the first country they had arrived in – in this case Pakistan – while they were waiting for asylum elsewhere.
According to Geoffrey York, the Johannesburg-based Africa correspondent for a Canadian newspaper, the Globe & Mail, South Africa had only been asked to accommodate 126 refugees and funding for them had been guaranteed for at least six months.