After more than a year of battling the Department of Home Affairs, on 12 February, Grahamstown High Court Judge Pickering ordered that the government department had six days to issue Zwelani Ncube with a work permit.

The judge concluded that the Zimbabwean teacher would suffer irreparable harm and prejudice if Home Affairs did not issue him with a work permit. He said that Home Affairs had not shown what prejudice it would suffer if Ncube was granted his work permit.

Previously earning R150 a month as a teacher in Bulawayo, Mr Ncube was offered a job teaching English at Molteno High School in the Eastern Cape in November 2007 but could not teach because Home Affairs in Queenstown made it impossible for him to obtain a work permit.

His phone calls were unreturned, his passport was confiscated, and he had to pay for unnecessary extensions of his visa before being informed, nine months after applying, that his work permit had been denied on ‘spurious grounds’.

He appealed against this decision to Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

And with the assistance of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), launched an application in the High Court, seeking to either force Home Affairs to grant him the work permit or compel the Minister to decide on his appeal before the end of November 2008 and compensate him for loss of earning and incidental expenses.

On 18 December 2008, Judge Pakade ordered director-general Mavuso Msimang to issue Mr Ncube with a work permit and the Minister to pay Mr Ncube R16 000 for loss of salary and transport costs to home affairs offices in Queenstown over eight months.

This was the first time a court ordered compensation in terms of the Promotion of Administration Act 3 of 2003 (PAJA).

However in response Home Affairs lodged an application for leave to appeal, which forced Mr Ncube to bring an urgent application asking the High Court to direct Home Affairs to honour the decision of the court and let him work.

The most recent High Court application was bought in term of Rule 49, which allows the terms of a judgement to be implemented even though an appeal is pending.

Mr Ncube said that he was grateful to the LRC, which gave him a sense of hope. ‘I am very excited about my work permit. I thought that I was stuck as a whole, and would have to go back to Zimbabwe where my family are starving.’

It is not certain when the appeal by Home Affairs will be heard.