KEY POINTS:
Taking a hot shower, reading the newspaper or going for an afternoon stroll are things most New Zealanders take for granted.
But an elderly Zimbabwean couple staying on Auckland's North Shore are savouring those simple pleasures as they contemplate a forced return to their stricken homeland.
The couple's daughter-in-law, who wishes to be known only as Jennifer, phoned Leighton Smith's Newstalk ZB radio show yesterday morning.
Immigration New Zealand has told her parents-in-law, aged 83 and 79, they must leave when their nine-month visitors' visas expire on July 17.
Jennifer told the Herald she approached Manukau East MP Ross Robertson to seek a ministerial dispensation on the matter.
"We don't want to put them on the plane because we feel we would be sending them back to their deaths," she said.
"[President Robert] Mugabe has said in interviews that whites are the enemy and he wants them out."
The couple, like many Zimbabweans, cannot get food or medical treatment and rely on monthly food parcels from an aid organisation to survive.
Around the time the husband retired, they were ordered from their farm, had most of their money taken away and were left with nothing.
Their one attempt to flee Zimbabwe was aborted when the government refused to release any of their money.
They have two daughters in Zimbabwe and two in South Africa, for whom life is "a constant struggle", Jennifer said.
The couple's case is complicated by the fact that neither has been allowed a Zimbabwean passport despite having lived there for more than 70 years.
The husband was born in South Africa and the wife in Britain, and they hold passports from the countries of their birth.
Jennifer's husband - a resident for 14 years - tried to sponsor his parents to stay in New Zealand, but was declined because the "heart of the family" was in Zimbabwe.
In 2004, the Government relaxed immigration rules for Zimbabweans but the couple did not qualify because neither had a Zimbabwean passport.
Immigration New Zealand had now told the couple their case wasn't "compelling" enough to justify breaking with policy, Jennifer said.
"We are appealing to them on humanitarian grounds and basic human rights," she said. "People we know have been executed in front of their children, badly beaten, terrorised and threatened.
"This is what I have to send my parents-in-law back to. We're not asking anyone for anything. We're not rich but we work hard and we have enough money to support them."
An Immigration spokeswoman said that under the family residence policy, an applicant must have more family living in New Zealand than in any other country.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Shane Jones said last night the appeal was being considered.
