Zimbabwe: Passport fees leave a population going nowhere

HARARE, 22 January 2009 (IRIN) - After being accepted by a South African university, Golden Gutu thought the hard part was over, but the worst hurdles for Zimbabweans trying to further their studies were just beginning.

There was just the small matter of a passport, and then he could pack his bags. When he had last checked with the Registrar General's Office in the capital, Harare, which issues travel documents, an emergency passport cost US$200, a sum he had painstakingly saved.

Last week, he went to apply for a passport. "I was devastated when I was told that the government was no longer accepting its own currency [the Zimbabwean dollar], and that the cost of a passport for an adult had risen to US$670, while a new passport for children was now costing US$420," he told IRIN.

Adding to the costs is a US$20 supplementary charge for the application form. "I did not have that kind of money on me, and my dreams have been shattered as I have lost out on an opportunity to further my studies. There must be thousands of people who are in a similar predicament," Gutu said.

Gutu was told that he could apply for an Emergency Travel Document (ETD), at a cost of US$70, but a study visa in neighbouring South Africa would require a valid passport.

Clever Bere, president of the Zimbabwe National Students Union, an umbrella grouping for students pursuing higher education, told IRIN that the price hikes would exclude scores of students from further education, even though they had been accepted by universities.

"Most students come from very humble backgrounds and our parents are not paid in foreign currency but in the local currency, which the government is refusing to accept," he said.

The steep rise in passport fees has ended the winding queues that were a permanent feature outside the registrar's office.

Prices to high for cross border traders

An employee at the passports section in the registrar's office told IRIN: "Based on my observations and interaction with the few people who are still coming for the expensive passports, only the well-connected or the elite are the ones still able to pay the exorbitant fees."

He declined to be identified, but commented: "A few have revealed that friends and relatives working in the diaspora have contributed funds for desperate relatives seeking passports."

Zimbabwe's political stalemate, an economy in freefall, widespread hunger - nearly half the population relies on emergency food aid for survival - has seen more than three million people leave the country in the past decade, in what has been termed "The Diaspora".

There was a palpable anger at the increase in fees at a bus terminus in Harare, where cross-border traders - whose livelihoods depend on valid travel documents - prepared to travel south to South Africa. 

"What the government needs to understand is that the move to increase passport fees will have the ripple effect of further increasing food shortages in the country, because many of our members will not be able to renew passports when they expire or are lost," Chipo Sevenzo, a veteran cross-border trader, told IRIN.

"A majority of households and supermarkets in the country are stocked with groceries and commodities supplied by cross-border traders, who depend on passports to trade and support their direct and extended families."

She said with unemployment estimated at nearly 90 percent, the informal traders had cushioned the effects of poverty and hunger in Zimbabwe.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party led by Morgan Tsvangirai, told IRIN the price increases had put travel documents beyond the reach of most Zimbabweans.

"Because of the government's failed policies, the ordinary people are now being punished through a denial to access a basic document like a passport. Innovative Zimbabweans who want to provide for their families by buying food in other countries can no longer do so because they cannot afford the high passport fees," he said.

"Only the elite, who are responsible for the crises that we face, are the ones who will get the passports and be able to import food, while ordinary citizens have been marginalised."

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