Thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa without a visa queued on Friday at government offices to meet a January 1 deadline to legalise their stay in the country. Home Affairs ministry director Mkuseli Apleni said more than 230,000 applications had already been received by 42 offices, although the figure was far short of the estimated 1.5 million Zimbabweans living there. Thousands, however, had left it to the last minute and had to join the queues on Friday, as Apleni pledged that anyone still in line at midnight would have their application processed. South Africa in April 2009 introduced a policy of allowing hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans to enter the country without papers as Zimbabwe descended into economic and political instability. A bilateral agreement between the two countries' home affairs ministers subsequently led to the announcement of the visa amnesty. Those in the country were told to apply for permits by December 31 to regularise their presence in South Africa and warned that anyone without the necessary papers after that date would face expulsion. No government data exists on the number of Zimbabweans in South Africa, but aid organisations estimate the number could be as high as 1.5 million. Thousands of other Zimbabwean nationals fled the country after the end of the football World Cup in July, fearing a repeat of the xenophobic violence that left 62 dead and thousands homeless in 2008, when mobs of South Africans turned on foreign nationals they accused of taking scarce jobs. Zimbabweans and other foreigners are often blamed by locals in poor slum areas for unemployment and high crime. 