The Home Away From Home Initiative will approach the High Court next Tuesday with an urgent application to allow South Africans employed abroad to be allowed to return to those respective countries.
This as some countries around the globe ease lockdown restrictions and resume economic activity.
The organisation Locked in South Africa consists of more than 3 000 South Africans who want to go back to their jobs abroad but are unable to do so due to the nationwide lockdown.
Chairperson of Home Away From Home and Democratic Alliance MP, Darren Bergman, says the South Africans want to return at their own cost.
“We’ve been taking the fight up for the citizens in this country wanting to go and work abroad or live abroad. A lot of them have families there or pets there, houses, cars and all they’ve been asking from us is to go back. Now the ministers have said that they repatriated them back here and that they had to repatriate them back. And that’s simply not true. A lot of them came here before the COVID-19 outbreak and now want to, at their own cost, go back and its of course enshrined in the constitution that there’s freedom of movement,” says Bergman.
Since March, the South African government has repatriated its citizens from various countries including the United States, Brazil and China.
In this video, Darren Bergman discusses the process to repatriate South Africans from abroad
