Representatives of various civil society organisations criticised the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection at a Lawyers for Human Rights roundtable on Monday, describing the draft policy as ‘vague’ and ‘poorly drafted’.
Civil society representatives have slammed the recently published White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection as being flawed and poorly drafted. Concerns have been raised about the draft policy’s alleged attempts to “scapegoat” the migrant community in the lead-up to South Africa’s 2024 general elections.
The Department of Home Affairs gazetted the white paper on 10 November, calling for a “complete overhaul” of the migration ¬system in South Africa. The public has until 19 January 2024 to provide comments.
“While in the ordinary course of things, we would… have welcomed the good intention to administer a complete overhaul of frameworks relating to our immigration framework… we look at the white paper and we see it against the backdrop of the sociopolitical context… of the significant surge in deadly xenophobic attacks that have happened since 2008. We also see it in the context of the increasingly anti-migrant sentiment that is being purported by the ANC,” said Nabeelah Mia, head of Penal Reform Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights.
“The white paper itself is an attempt to scapegoat a community who unfortunately do not have the voting power in a bid to win votes, rather than the governing party taking responsibility for its failing governance over the past 28 years, leading to higher rates of inequality and unemployment.”
Mia was speaking at a Lawyers for Human Rights roundtable on Monday. The event provided a platform for civil society stakeholders to discuss the contents of the white paper and its implications for the rights of refugees, citizens and migrants in South Africa.
“The white paper itself, as a policy document, has significant flaws. It was quite vague and shocking in its failure to provide an empirical foundation for its proposed policy reform,” said Mia.
This sentiment was echoed by James Chapman, head of advocacy at the Scalabrini Centre, who described the document as “poorly drafted”, with “sweeping statements” that were not backed by evidence.
“Rather than bringing itself into line with our constitutional jurisprudence that has been built up over the years as it relates to the rights of migrants �` specifically asylum seekers and refugees �` it is proposing to alter the law to prevent court challenges and… that doesn’t match up,” continued Mia.
A long process
The policy framework proposed in the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection is intended to replace three existing national policies:
• The Citizenship Act 88 of 1995;
• The Immigration Act, which is act number 13 of 2002; and
• The Refugees Act 130 of 1998.
“This is not a new situation. Home Affairs has made various attempts to overhaul and harmonise these same pieces of legislation. The difference in this particular situation is that they’ve never tried to introduce one piece of legislation dealing with all of these issues,” said Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh, Africa director of programmes for the International Commission of Jurists.
Ramjathan-Keogh said there would likely be a long consultation process before the finalisation of the proposed policy, possibly spanning years.
“This white paper has been four years in the making, so we can expect the consultation process to extend for a further period. We can see that Home Affairs would like it to be a very short consultation process based on the very short period of time they’ve given us to make submissions but we anticipate that

the final bill will be many years away and potentially will look very different to the current proposals,” she said.
With regard to refugee protection measures, the white paper proposes that South Africa review and withdraw from the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 UN Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, with the aim of rejoining these with reservations allowing for the limitation of refugees’ socioeconomic rights.
It further proposes that sections of the Citizenship Act should be reviewed, including those relating to citizenship by naturalisation, and that the Births and Deaths Registration Act be repealed in its entirety. The draft policy suggests that a register of all people granted citizenship by naturalisation should be kept by the Minister of Home Affairs.
Some recommended changes in terms of the immigration framework are that the Border Management Authority Act should be reviewed to align it with the new immigration and citizenship policy framework; and that the powers of immigration officers and the Inspectorate for Immigration Services should be strengthened.
False claims around citizenship issues
In order to become a South African citizen, the current legislation requires that a person must have a South African parent, according to Thandeka Chauke, head of the Statelessness Project at Lawyers for Human Rights.
There are exceptions to this, with processes that allow people to pursue citizenship if they would otherwise be stateless or when they are a child born to permanent residents in the country. There is also a pathway to citizenship by naturalisation for children who are born to non-South Africans, according to Chauke.
“The one thing [the white paper] has said is a claim that the current citizenship law is creating an easy pathway to South African citizenship for refugees and migrants, and therefore [it] is proposing a more cautious approach to citizenship… It says in the white paper that the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation… must be more stringent,” said Chauke, adding that the rationale behind this proposal was that the government needed to be protected from financial strain on its limited resources.
However, the claim that the pathway to citizenship by naturalisation was too easy was “simply false”, she continued.
Chauke referenced a recent article co-written by Loren Landau, co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab at the University of the Witwatersrand. The article stated that based on the information in the white paper, 150,997 people in South Africa have been granted citizenship by naturalisation since the 2002 Immigration Act.
“That figure only represents 0.2% of the population. So, the white paper does paint a false picture… that there’s so many non-South Africans that are accessing citizenship through naturalisation,” said Chauke.
She argued that safeguards already existed to prevent the abuse of processes for gaining citizenship, but that these were not laid out in the white paper.
“What we’ve now seen since 1995 is a slow and steady move to restrict access to that citizenship. While the white paper itself doesn’t… come right out and say what it intends to do, I think when we track that and look at the patterns of Home Affairs’ approach to interpretation of the citizenship law and its failure to effectively implement the laws, we can preempt what is going to come in the bill,” she said. V.5112

In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
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Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
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Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
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Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s indifference to the plight of those affected by his decisions is appalling In the tumultuous seas of immigration law, where uncertainty looms and families are left adrift in bureaucratic limbo, the department of home affairs has emerged as a sinking ship. As a director of a firm of immigration attorneys I’ve witnessed first-hand the dire consequences of the department’s negligence and incompetence. Today, I raise my voice not just as an attorney but as a concerned citizen, urging for a radical overhaul to salvage what remains of our immigration system. We have tirelessly fought battles in the courtroom against home affairs’ disregard for agreed-upon time frames. Countless cases have landed on our desks, each one a testament to the systemic failures plaguing the department. We’ve seen cases where contempt applications were the only recourse, as the department brazenly ignored court orders. V.5307
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Document proposes overhauling the Citizenship Act, the Refugees Act and the Immigration Act and a review of the international treaty on refugee protection Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the cabinet has approved a white paper overhauling the country’s immigration laws after “robust engagements” that resulted in “wide support” of the document’s policy positions. V.5308
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The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. The lost hours are largely due to system downtime, surpassing load-shedding. In the 2022/2023 financial year, where we experienced extensive load-shedding, system downtime was the cause of 41 691 hours lost (17 years), whereas load-shedding caused around 9 322 hours lost (4 years) at DHA civic offices on the production of smart IDs. V.5309
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JOHANNESBURG - Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that while the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection had been gazetted, there were amendments that needed to be made to the legislation before it could be passed into law. The White Paper is proposing an overhaul of the country`s migration laws, with the aim of tightening rules around allowing migrants into the country. V.5310
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Highly skilled professionals are leaving South Africa to move to other countries, while the local economy faces a skills shortage. Data from The Outlier revealed that there were just over 900,000 South Africans living abroad in 2020. This number has increased steadily over the past 20 years, from 500,000 in 2000, according to Stats SA’s Migration Profile Report for South Africa 2023. Of these 900,000 people, 7 out of 10 are living in either Europe or Oceania. In particular, Australia and New Zealand have seen a large growth in South African residents. In 2020, around 273,000 South Africans were living in those two countries, more than double the 106,000 who lived there in 2000. The UK remains still the top destination for South Africans who leave the country. V.5311
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The Department of Home Affairs is going through a torrid time. As The South African reported earlier this year, naturalised South Africans are being refused smart ID cards. This is despite having the same constitutional rights as every other South African citizen. Now, Home Affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi has decided to clarify the reasons behind lengthy delays for spousal visas.Business Tech reports that some spousal (and relatives) visas are taking up to two years to process. The minister of Home Affairs says this is because documentation and claims need to be verified. Replying to a parliamentary Q&A session, the minister says the issue is being addressed by the Home Affairs ‘Backlog Eradication Plan’. V.5305
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Border Management Authority SA commissioner Mike Masiapato on Sunday revealed that over a 10-day period during Easter nearly 4,000 people were intercepted attempting to enter the country illegally.Addressing a media briefing, Masiapato said 2,403 of those intercepted did not have any documents at all. Another 1,019 individuals were refused entry for being undesirable and 419 were found inadmissible to enter the country due to various reasons.“The majority of those arrested without documents were intercepted at the vulnerable segments of the borderline. They were processed, declared undesirable for five years, and were deported. Most of the inadmissible individuals were found with invalid passports, fraudulent visas or just failed to produce relevant documents such as valid yellow fever certificates, especially those travelling from yellow fever endemic countries,” Masiapato said. V.5303
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