Mother has one week to leave the country

A SOUTH AFRICAN woman at the centre of a deportation row has been given a week to leave the country.

Nteta Appiakorang went to her local garda station in Tralee at 3pm on Monday and was told she would be moved to Dublin ahead of her deportation. After a two-and-a-half year battle for asylum, Nteta and her daughters Yesunia, 8, and Senita, 11 were given just two hours to pack up her belongings.

“They had less than an hour for them to literally pick up two and a half years worth of stuff,” said Deirdre Levi, co-ordinator at the Tralee Trans-Net Drop In Centre for asylum seekers. After a fraught 24 hours, the family was given a week to get their affairs in order.

Ms Levi said yesterday: “It’s great for them to have another week in Tralee. Tralee is their home. At least we can buy them suitcases and organise their departure in a more dignified way.”

Nteta, an ethnic Zulu, had applied for asylum on the grounds that her husband and son had been killed because of their political beliefs. Her husband was a member of the mainly Zulu Inkatha movement, which was involved in sometimes bloody confrontations with those attached to the ruling African National Congress. She says those who killed her husband and son went looking for her and her daughters and warned them to leave.

The Trans Net centre, where Nteta has been a volunteer, is applying for a work permit for the mother of two. But that cannot happen unless the deportation order is revoked. Nteta and the children are due to report to the local garda station next week.