Zimbabwe's Registrar-General on Tuesday said he suspended the issuing of new passports after a mystery fire at a government data processing plant in Harare.

This is bad news for the 250 000 illegal Zimbabwean immigrants who applied for passports to regularise their stay in South Africa.
 
The fire took place at a military barracks in the capital where the data processing systems for passports were apparently located.

Zimbabwean authorities were processing around 2000 passports a day.
Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede said no passports would be issued until further notice.

Mudede refused to say whether he would now accept South Africa's offer of a superior printing machine that can issue 4000 passports per hour.