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Gigaba`s career on the line in visa fight

Source: Anthony Butler – Business Day, 14/08/2015


HOW can the debacle of the immigration regulations be explained?
According to media reports, youthful heartthrob Home Affairs Minister
Malusi Gigaba has faced off against wiry veteran Tourism Minister
Derek Hanekom in a fight about unabridged birth certificates and
biometric data collection.


The ill-conceived nature of the regulations bequeathed by Gigaba`s
predecessor, Naledi Pandor, probably became clear to Gigaba only when
his department presented its plan to implement the 2002 Immigration
Act, and its new regulations, to the economic sectors employment and
infrastructure development cluster in February.




The Department of Home Affairs had been largely oblivious to the
concerns of investors, businesspeople and parastatals about the damage
new regulations would do to tourism, foreign direct investment and the
acquisition of scarce skills. The horrified cluster secretariat
convened a workshop at director-general level to formulate a reply,
bringing together departments such as Planning, Monitoring and
Evaluation; Public Works; Trade and Industry; Small Business; Science
and Technology; Transport; and Tourism. They reached out to their
stakeholders in a creditable consultative exercise, and prepared a
devastating assessment of the new regulations well before they were to
be introduced on June 1.


New visa regulations of many kinds, they noted, were already causing
huge costs for businesses investing in SA. Technicians have to reapply
for visas each time they enter SA. Applications for general work visas
require certification from an incapacitated Department of Labour.
Critical skills visas require accreditation by the glacially slow
South African Qualifications Agency. Corporate visas have to be
submitted to three departments: Home Affairs, Trade and Industry, and
Labour.


The new requirements for travelling with children, the cluster
observed, would be a major threat to tourism. Why collect biometric
data in ways that deter tourists, especially when such information
could be more efficiently gathered at ports of entry? The cluster
concluded that all these regulations would cost jobs — and probably in
a big way.


Gigaba decided to go ahead anyway.
It would be comforting to imagine that this is merely a "departmental
silo" problem, in which Home Affairs is preoccupied with child
trafficking, while Tourism is preoccupied with visitor convenience. Or
that this is all a matter of face for a young minister who wants to be
president, has failed as minister of public enterprises, and now
cannot bow down before the forces of reaction.


But it is much worse than that. First, it is about race. The tourism
industry, no matter how many jobs it creates, shows a white face to
government, and the success of the sector breeds resentment. Second,
Home Affairs and the security cluster departments are packed with
paranoid and economically illiterate officials.


Third, African National Congress (ANC) and state mechanisms for making
policy do not mesh well. When it comes to fine-tuning immigration
regulations to promote "capitalist economic growth" (as if the ANC has
some other kind of growth on offer), a small man like Gigaba is forced
to play the anticapitalist game. If ministers do not protect their own
jobs above those of SA`s citizens, they cease to be ministers.


In his state of the nation "implementation update" on Tuesday,
President Jacob Zuma woke from his slumbers to announce the
establishment of an interministerial committee on immigration
regulations under Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.

It will be
interesting to see whether the pieties of the National Development
Plan can hold their own against the security state paranoia and
fatuous anticapitalism that threaten to overwhelm the current
administration.


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