White paper highlights Gigaba’s antipoor and anti-African approach

Source: Business Day, 23/07/2018

Since Malusi Gigaba stepped back into the role of home affairs
minister in February, it is time to reflect critically on his
regressive, antipoor and anti-African international migration vision
for SA. The White Paper on International Migration, approved by the
government in March 2017, aims to manage migration to achieve SA’s
national goals.
The white paper states that SA’s new international migration policy
`must be oriented towards Africa`. However, there is little in the
document that suggests the new policy will be pro-African. Rather, the
Department of Home Affairs wants to make it extremely difficult for
predominantly poor black people from elsewhere in Africa to come to SA.
The new immigration plans are framed around national development and
security goals. Poor and unskilled immigrants are essentially seen as
a threat to SA’s security, stability and prosperity. The white paper
separates migrants into `worthy` and `unworthy` individuals. The
international migrants who have skills and money are welcome to come
to the country and can stay in SA permanently. Others �` the poor and
unskilled �` are deemed unworthy and undesirable.
The former minister, Hlengiwe Mkhize, is on record saying SA must
tighten its immigration policy and protect its borders �` even if this
is labelled anti-African behaviour on the continent. If poor
foreigners somehow enter the country, they will be dealt with harshly
and likely deported.
SA is one of the world’s most unequal countries, with extreme poverty
and inequality rooted in colonial and apartheid oppression as well as
the failure to improve the lives of millions of predominantly black
people in the post apartheid period.
Yet it’s through the use of language of othering, scaremongering and
securitisation �` from `migrants are taking our jobs` to `foreigners
are criminals` �` that immigrants are blamed for many of SA’s woes and
the regressive migration policies are facilitated.
According to the 2011 census, 75% of about 2-million international
migrants who are based in SA are from Africa. More than 90% of the
migrants are from the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
region, with Zimbabwe and Mozambique contributing 46% and 27% of all
international migrants respectively. The Statistics SA Community
Survey 2016 puts the percentage of foreign-born population in SA at a
mere 2.8%.
These numbers clearly show that the country is not flooded with
foreign nationals. Evidence also shows that foreigners are not
stealing jobs from South Africans.
As a relatively strong economy in the region, SA attracts economic
migrants from the neighbouring countries and the rest of the
continent. Unable to find legal ways to enter the country, many
migrants see the asylum system as a way in.
The white paper proposes an SADC work visa that will help regulate
economic migration in the region. This visa is likely to ease the
pressure on the asylum system, allowing economic migrants a legal and
regulated way into SA.
Despite this, the government plans to go all out in attacking the
asylum system, introducing regressive and dehumanising policies and
procedures aimed at making SA an unattractive destination for asylum
seekers.
Many of the department’s proposed measures are not just ill-informed
but will be grossly unconstitutional. While the department already
often undermines the Constitution by flagrantly ignoring court orders
and implementing cruel and unlawful policies, this will only get worse
if the white paper proposals become the law.
The asylum seekers �` people who have fled their countries due to
conflict, political prosecution and other hardships and who have
applied for recognition as refugees in SA �` will be able to leave the
detention centres only when they receive refugee status or are
declined and deported.
One of the most controversial aspects of the white paper is the plan
to establish asylum-seeker processing centres. These centres will be
used for the detention of asylum seekers while their applications are
being processed. The use of blanket detention of migrants as the
primary way of managing migration is problematic in that it amounts to
the criminalisation of the poor.
The proposals in the white paper that deal with the asylum system are
regressive and likely to be in breach of the Constitution. As Lawyers
for Human Rights has pointed out, the blanket detention provision is
an `inherent violation of the right to human dignity` that will fail
to `meet the requirements of proportionality under the limitations
clause under section 36 of the Constitution`. Most disturbingly, the
new policy will undoubtedly legalise the dehumanising practices
experienced by migrants and asylum seekers, who frequently face
mistreatment and corruption as they navigate the asylum process.
The asylum seekers �` people who have fled their countries due to
conflict, political prosecution and other hardships and who have
applied for recognition as refugees in SA �` will be able to leave the
detention centres only when they receive refugee status or are
declined and deported.
Asylum seekers wait for three to 15 years for their applications to be
processed. Even if this time is halved, the government’s detention
plans will be an enormous and expensive undertaking that will likely
lead to corruption and abuse.
The department claims that the basic needs of asylum seekers will be
catered for while in detention. It hopes to outsource the provision of
services in the processing centres to international and national aid
organisations.
However, it is unlikely anyone will be interested or have funding and
capacity to take on this controversial burden.
Most likely, these processing centres will be outsourced to private
companies to run, with the taxpayers footing the bill.
For years, international migrants have suffered in dehumanising and
oppressive conditions at the Lindela Repatriation Centre, the
management of which is outsourced to the private security company
Bosasa. If Lindela is anything to go by, serious administrative
failures, human rights violations, poor healthcare provision, impunity
and the absence of functional oversight and accountability mechanisms
in the proposed detention centres can be expected.
Asylum seekers are free to move within SA and reside where they choose
while awaiting the processing of their applications for refugee
status. They are also allowed to work or study. These rights were
granted to them by the courts, which argued that the right to work is
a critical element of respect for human dignity that also allows
asylum seekers to sustain themselves. If the new immigration proposals
are implemented, asylum seekers will have no right to education, work
or freedom of movement.
The white paper does not mention what would happen to the children of
the asylum seekers held in the processing centres. Will they be able
to go to school? If so, where? Will the department build and staff
schools in the processing centres? If not, denying basic education to
the children of asylum seekers would be against the Constitution. The
government is constitutionally bound to protect the interests of all
children. In particular, section29 of the Constitution protects the
right to basic education for all children �` local and foreign �` based
in SA.
The white paper aims to limit the pull factors and discourage poor
migrants and asylum seekers from embarking on a perilous journey
across the border to SA. In this, SA is following the anti-immigrant
trends of the US, much of Europe and Australia, closing itself to
asylum seekers and economic migrants.
In Europe many governments are deliberately mistreating and degrading
migrants and refugees `to make a point to anyone else considering the
journey`. Just like Europe, SA plans to build `places of internment,
spaces of relegation, a way to sideline people considered to be
intruders, lacking valid permits, rendering them illegal, and
ultimately undeserving of dignity`.
Through harsh treatment the department under Gigaba’s leadership wants
to deter poor African migrants and asylum seekers from coming into the
country. However, despite all this, the new policy framework is
unlikely to stem migration from the continent.
As long as there are strong push factors such as violent conflict,
political instability, repression, climate change and extreme poverty
on the African continent, asylum seekers and economic migrants will
continue to see SA as a place of safety where human rights and respect
for human dignity are enshrined in the Constitution.
What the new policy will do is push many poor African migrants
underground, making them vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation,
while welcoming with open arms the rich and skilled and treating them
humanely and with dignity.
As the ministers are shuffled every other month in the department,
Gigaba might soon [again] be gone, but his antipoor and anti-African
international migration vision will haunt SA for a long time.