Mavis Matapo is 17-year-old Zimbabwean living in the UK. She is so scared to go outside her parents’ house alone.
Dr Masimba Mavaza
She shivers with fear each time she hears a male voice. Her life crumbled into pieces the day she attended a birthday party in Luton.
After the party, Mavis was raped by a group of Zimbabwean teenagers who were at the party. They took turns to rape her and left her in the house naked and bleeding.
Her parents were so angry and blamed her for being raped. With the help of some charitable organisations, Mavis managed to make a report to the police.
Her abusers were arrested and sentenced to five years each in prison.
They are already out, but Mavis still has the trauma. Her life is a wreck. The sexual abusers are now pursuing their dreams without looking back at what they did to Mavis.
Three of Mavis’s abusers were arrested again for another sexual offence. They are about to finish their sentence.
The trail of broken lives left behind by these “vampires” is horrible.
The British government has moved in to deport these people back home and some in the Zimbabwean community have started crying foul.
There are some deportations lined up for those who have committed heinous crimes. The British government is exercising its right to clear the society of such malcontents.
The deportations lined up by the British government are not unlawful as they are made to look by some Zimbabweans in the UK.
Some have taken time to insult the government of Zimbabwe for agreeing to accept itserrant children back home.
Parents have failed to control their children and now resort to blame the government of Zimbabwe for being responsible and agreeing to accept their citizens who are wayward.
Many Zimbabweans become so relaxed and forget that they are never measured on the same scale with the British citizens born and bred in England and qualified by colour.
As foreigners being hosted in this land, we need to know our place, not behave as if there are equal rights. We need to look no further than football. You are a darling when you are useful.
But coming to these deportations, there is no racism or segregation. People have chosen the lives of crime and they are facing the consequences.
The British people expect their government to remove unwanted elements and to make their borders safe. Their actions are lawful and done under the UK Borders Act 2007.
It provides that a non-British citizen will be automatically considered for deportation if they are convicted of a crime and their jail sentence is for at least 12 months.
Beyond article 8, the principle of non-refoulement is a significant consideration in determining deportation. Deportation is a statutory power of the Home Secretary.
People who are not British citizens are liable to deportation from the UK if the Home Secretary deems their deportation to be conducive to the public good.
The UK Borders Act 2007 made provision for the automatic deportation of foreign criminals.
The Home Secretary must make a deportation order in respect of a foreign criminal unless certain exceptions apply (e.g. where deportation would contravene the UK’s obligations under the Refugee and Human Rights Conventions).
The Home Office has made a pact with several governments and its own police force to work together in identifying and removing offenders.
An agreement with local police is called operation Nexus.
Operation Nexus is a joint operation between the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement Directorate and several police forces.
It was launched in London in 2012.
Described as a means of more effectively tackling offending by foreign nationals, its focus was said to be on identifying ‘high harm’ offenders.
However, the initiative has attracted criticism for facilitating the deportation of people with no criminal convictions based on untested police reports or conduct that led to a criminal charge, but did not result in a conviction.
Critics say its mission has widened considerably since its inception, targeting specific groups for deportation.
An unsuccessful legal challenge was brought by the AIRE Centre in 2017, and their subsequent appeal was dismissed in 2018.
Section 32(5) of the UK Borders Act 2007 mandates that, unless certain circumstances apply, the Home Secretary must make a deportation order against a “foreign criminal”, defined in the same Act as a person who has been convicted of an offence and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment as a result.
The exception most commonly relied upon is that contained in section 33(2)(a): that removal of the individual would breach his or her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in particular the right to family and private life under Article 8.
In the old days, these individual private or family life rights would be weighed against the public interest in deporting foreign criminals by the application of a five-stage test set out in the case of R (Razgar) v SSHD [2004] UKHL 27, normally by a judge or panel of judges at the tribunal.
Case law permitted inclusion of a wide variety of factors which could weigh for – or against – an individual’s family or private life rights under Article 8. As varied, in fact, as life itself.
That immigrants who had committed crimes not only had the right to appeal against a decision to deport them, but would occasionally win, caused – and continues to cause – significant ire in certain corners of the British print media.
The point made by the government was that when balancing the rights of the individual to his or her family or private life under Article 8 against the public interest in deportation, too little weight was accorded to that public interest, and too much weight given to the unwieldy and nebulous rights guaranteed under Article 8.
There has been irresponsible reporting by some sections of the media motivated by the opposition and some criminal elements in the UK.
They found the opportunity of vilifying the Zimbabwean government and again start the human rights abuse tired song. Each time criminals are about to be sent back home, someone will start blaming the Zimbabwean government.
It must be remembered that deportation is a statutory power given to the Home Secretary.
Under section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971, a person who is not a British citizen (referred to here as ‘a foreign national’) is liable to be deported from the UK if the Home Secretary deems it to be ‘conducive to the public good’.
If you are made subject to a deportation order then you’ll be required to leave the UK.
The order will authorise your detention until such a time as you are deported.
It will also prohibit you from re-entering the country for as long as it is in force and will invalidate any leave to enter or remain in the UK given to you before the order was made.
Many parents have taken more time in looking for money, totally ignoring their children. As long as your child is not yet a British, that child is not safe.
The only crime where citizenship can be revoked at the moment is terrorism. So if you have not given your children the British nationality they are few minutes from deportation.
This has nothing to do with the Zimbabwean government it is your own making. The problem with Zimbabweans abroad is to blame anyone for their own making.
They blame lawyers and team up against lawyers with regulatory authorities who are after silencing the defending voices.
Most Zimbabwean lawyers in the UK have been struck off or prosecuted for what they have not done. People trust foreign lawyers, but after their cases are soiled they come to Zimbabwean lawyers to clean their dirty.
If it fails, they blame the Zimbabwean lawyer as if it is him/her who has put them in that situation in the first place.
Blaming Zimbabwean government for the mistakes and crimes of those to be removed or deported is irresponsible.
It must be remembered that until paragraphs 398, 399 and 399A were introduced into the Immigration Rules, the protection afforded by Article 8 to foreign criminals facing deportation was governed entirely by case law.
These new rules attempted to define exactly what qualities a family or private life would need to have in order to outweigh the public interest in deportation.
Now when deportation is processed in most cases a person will have been given enough time to challenge his deportation in courts. When there is no legal recourse, left then deportation takes place.
Most deportations are not done unfairly and vilifying your country and making it look like a hell on earth is unforgivable.
The deportations lined up are not for those without papers, but for those who have committed crimes and who have exhausted their appeal rights.
It is not the duty of the Zimbabwean government to appeal on your behalf. As long as you are Zimbabwean they will welcome you home.
There is a statutory scheme which acknowledges that in two sets of circumstances, a decision to deport will be in breach of an individual’s rights under Article 8 ECHR.
These circumstances are known as Exception 1, which protects those who have been in the UK for significant periods of time, and Exception 2, which protects those with established relationships with a partner, or a child.
The integration exception is contained in section 117C(4) of the 2002 Act. In order, to satisfy this exception the foreign criminal must show that:
(a) [he] has been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for most of [his] life,
(b) [he] is socially and culturally integrated in the United Kingdom, and
(c) there would be very significant obstacles to [his] integration into the country to which [he] is proposed to be deported.
The second exception is satisfied when the foreign criminal must show a genuine and subsisting relationship with either a partner or a child, and that the effect deportation on either one would be “unduly harsh”.
Exception 2 applies where C has a genuine and subsisting relationship with a qualifying partner, or a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with a qualifying child, and the effect of C’s deportation on the partner or child would be unduly harsh.
“Qualifying child” means a child who is British or who has lived in the UK for seven years or more: section 117D(1).
Biological parentage is not necessarily required: Where a foreign national criminal is sentenced to more than four years in prison, they will only succeed in challenging deportation where “very compelling circumstances” can be demonstrated.
The section 117C(6) test is also a fallback for those sentenced between 1-4 years, but who cannot fit within the exceptions under sections 117C(4) or 117C(5): NA (Pakistan) v SSHD & Ors [2016] EWCA Civ 662, paras 25-27.
We again must remember that serious harm offences can cause deportation.
The Secretary of State has the discretion to consider whether an offence has caused serious harm. Such an offence may have resulted in a sentence of less than 12 months, but may still be grounds on which to pursue deportation.
There are several people on the deportation list who have raped defrauded killed and most teenagers have been doing drugs and committing armed robberies and a number of crimes in heard of.
Surely you cannot expect the UK government to keep these in their country.
When these criminals are cornered, they then lift the asylum card. Vilifying their own country for them to be allowed to stay.
There are some gullible British political parties who then make noise and support these embellished stories from these criminals and portray our beautiful country as a pariah state.
The deportations will go ahead and the British government has a right to give closure to so many victims like Mavis.
The opportunists who are now cashing on this situation by demonising our country must be ashamed.
Zimbabwe is the only country we can call ours in the whole world.
