South Africa Could Deport 1.2 Million Zimbabweans, Lawyers Say

South Africa may start deporting more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans in April after they missed a deadline to legalize their residency, Lawyers For Human Rights said.

Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalize their residency before the Dec. 31 deadline, South Africa’s government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A “conservative” estimate by Johannesburg’s University of The Witwatersrand is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa, Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, the head of the refugee and migrant rights program for Lawyers for Human Rights, said.