PASSOP - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

PASSOP is a community-based, grass roots non-profit organization devoted to fighting for the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, and based in Cape Town

Cape Town

Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. It is unique in that it is an advocacy and activist organisation that draws the bulk of its members from the refugee community. By identifying and exposing corruption within the Home Affairs Department's refugee reception centre, PASSOP has helped greatly to enable the increase in numbers of asylum seekers being served each day (from around 20 before the creation of PASSOP to now over 200). Through protest action, PASSOP has brought the issues of corruption and xenophobia

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

to the public eye.

Founding

PASSOP was founded in 2007 by a group of Zimbabweans and spearheaded by Braam Hanekom. Though originally established in response to increased tensions between Zimbabwean foreign nationals fleeing Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe

Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...

's increasingly repressive regime and South African citizens who blamed them for crime and unemployment

Unemployment

Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

. PASSOP has since become a leading advocate for refugees and immigrants in their demands for human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

in South Africa. Staffed by volunteers and funded primarily through donations, PASSOP has had a large impact on the debate around the situation of documented and undocumented immigrants in South Africa, vowing to be a “voice for the voiceless.”.Passop is an Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

word meaning beware.

Protests around Home Affairs Queue

PASSOP set the tone for its protest activism in its advocacy for the refugees who were forced to wait in massive queues outside of Cape Town's Department of Home Affairs Refugee Center, in November 2007. At that time, the Department of Home Affairs processed only 20 asylum applications daily, as between 600 and 1,000 refugees camped outside the department in a queue circling the block. Many foreign nationals waited in the queue for weeks; one, Adonis Musati, starved to death while waiting to receive asylum documents that he was entitled to by law..

Following this death, PASSOP lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission

South African Human Rights Commission

The South African Human Rights Commission was inaugurated in October 1995 as an independent national institution. It draws its mandate from the South African Constitution by way of the South African Human Rights Commission Act of 1994....

(SAHRC) and raised funds to repatriate Musati's body to Zimbabwe. PASSOP members also staged several protests at the Refugee Center and lobbied the Parliament on behalf of those refugees still waiting in the queue. As a direct result, Cape Town's Department of Home Affairs now services between 180 and 300 applications daily. The city of Cape Town has provided those queuing with clean water taps, waste bins and portable toilets. Braam Hanekom is a columnist for The Zimbabwean and uses the column, "PASSOP Watch" as a medium to inform immigrants of their rights.

Response to Xenophobic Violence

Following Xenophobic attacks in several informal settlements in the Western Cape and Gautang in May and June 2008, PASSOP was a vocal member of the Civil Society Task Team, set up by the SAHRC in response to the massive influx of foreign nationals into refugee camps. PASSOP worked closely with both South Africans and foreign nationals to negotiate the refugees' peaceful reintegration into their communities. PASSOP remains a forum in which refugees can speak out about the conditions in which they now live in South Africa. PASSOP works closely with community leaders in the Zimbabwean, Congolese and Somali community structures to address issues, concerns and problems facing refugees and immigrants within Cape Town. In this, PASSOP especially advocates for undocumented immigrants who often have no civil representation. PASSOP also collaborates with students and has many student volunteers from the University of Cape Town

University of Cape Town

The University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...

who assist and support it in many of its day to day functions.

Zimfest

PASSOP is the beneficiary of the annual Cape Town Zimfest Music festival, first held in the Good Hope centre, Cape Town on Sept. 6, 2008. The musical event features performers including Freshlyground

Freshlyground

Freshlyground is a South African Afro-fusion band that formed in Cape Town in 2002. The band members variously hail from South Africa, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe...

, The Rudimentals

The Rudimentals

The Rudimentals are an eight-piece ska/reggae band from Cape Town, South Africa. The band's releases include two CDs, More Fire and Set It Proper, and a live DVD/CD combo of the 2007 Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens Concert. The band is signed to the United Kingdom based Moon Ska World distribution...

, The Dirty Skirts, Ike Moriz, New Altum, Tristan Waterkeyn and Coda

Coda (band)

Coda is a Rock en Español band from Mexico, formed in 1989. The band had much of success in the early 1990s, releasing four albums. In the late 1990s, the band had several line-up changes; the band disbanded in 2000, but resurfaced in 2002 with a new line-up....

Core Values

PASSOP believes that South Africans and African Immigrants have in common the dreams shared by many oppressed – those of freedom, of peace, of freedom of expression and most importantly those of equality.
PASSOP maintains that definitions of refugees and asylum seekers need to be reformulated to take into account breadline refugees. The situation in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

is so appalling that people must choose between leaving their homes in search of a means of survival or remaining at home to starve. The economic condition in Zimbabwe is so extreme it constitutes a humanitarian crisis

Humanitarian crisis

A humanitarian crisis is an event or series of events which represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area...

. People in Zimbabwe are so destitute that many are below the breadline, meaning they cannot even afford basic food and are therefore driven out of their own country, seeking subsistence survival in South Africa and other Southern Africa nations. PASSOP wants to make the South African public aware of the lack of choice people have in their decisions to cross the border. PASSOP is against all xenophobic attacks on immigrants and maintains that the right to freedom and dignity is one of all persons residing in South Africa, whether here legally or illegally. PASSOP has made their disappointment with South African foreign policy known through the media and public protests. PASSOP continues to demand immediate improvement in the services provided to refugees and asylum seekers by the Department of Home Affairs.

External links

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