Mondli Makhanya | Refresh South Africa`s migration debate because our system has failed us

Source: City Press, 16/01/2024

The following argument in the department of home affairs’ white paper on immigration just about sums it up:
“South Africa is today a great place to live in and many people in the world aspire to live in, work in or be citizens of South Africa. In the result, many foreign nationals come to South Africa and stay in the country illegally. No one can account for all undocumented migrants. The department of home affairs has no idea as to how many illegal immigrants are in South Africa.
It says that Africa Check â€` the organisation that sorts facts from fiction and combats disinformation â€` has “come across claims of 5 million, 6 million and even 13 million migrants” in South Africa. Quite wild claims, as anyone can tell.
The bottom line here is that we just do not know. The best the authorities and experts have had to work with are estimates.
According to the Migration Data Portal, an estimated 2.9 million migrants resided in South Africa at mid-year 2020 (ibid), the most industrialised economy in the region and a particularly attractive destination for those in search of education and better opportunities.
The white paper could not have come at a better time as immigration is set to be a hot potato in the election campaign that is already underway, even before a date for the poll is set. Many political parties have latched on to this subject, spewing populist rhetoric and suggesting unsound, unworkable solutions.
Just last week Patriotic Alliance president Gayton McKenzie led a bunch of his goons on a mission to stop Zimbabweans from crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa.
Recklessly xenophobic South African opposition Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie and members of his right-wing party took their anti-immigrants vigilantism to the Limpopo River in Beitbridge bordering South Africa and Zimbabwe in a bid to prevent undocumented people
They succeeded in getting social media attention for their fool’s errand, something that was obviously the sole intention of the exercise. The PA and some other formations have proposed the wholesale deportation of “illegal immigrants” and even have this as a key election promise.
How exactly they intend to hunt down and transport millions of people to various countries around the continent and beyond defies comprehension. Even now, home affairs says it only manages to deport between 15 000 and 20 000 illegal immigrants annually.
The department, for its part, has been involved in a futile bid to end the Zimbabwe exemption permit scheme that allowed people who had fled that country during the economic and social meltdown to regularise their stay in South Africa.
This would have meant that 178 000 people would suddenly have had to uproot and return to a country that is still in the dire straits it was in when they left. With 15 to 20 years in South Africa, these people now have roots here.
There are children who have grown up as loyal supporters of Orlando Pirates and removing them from the country where this great football club resides would severely traumatise them.
They would lose out on the education system that has nurtured their minds. Their parents have homes and jobs that sustain extended families in their blighted home country. Simply put, that mass deportation would be an act of immense cruelty.
And it would target these documented and law-abiding immigrants and leave millions of others who are an unknown quantity to roam free.
This white paper has now put this divisive issue in the formal debate space. It has created space for us to discuss immigration, residency and the route to citizenship in a rational manner.
That by no means guarantees that the inputs will be well reasoned, but at least it is not a space that is clumsy and uncontrolled, as with the vigilantism and populism that has defined South Africans’ recent responses to the immigration crisis.
As Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi points out in his introductory remarks to the white paper:
the policy and legislative gaps within the department of home affairs have created fertile ground for violent clashes between foreign nationals and citizens, including belligerent groups siding either with or against the current migration system.
The public participation process should be more than about consolidating three disparate and antiquated pieces of legislation into one that meets the needs of modern-day, democratic South Africa.
Our immigration system has failed us in the past and left us saddled with huge numbers of undocumented people. That, in itself, is a security threat. It is also burdensome to institutions that provide services and to those who plan human settlements and infrastructure.
But thinking you can wish away the immigrants (legal and illegal, asylum seekers and economic refugees) is a fantasy.
We have to accept that the vast majority of economic refugees and asylum seekers are here to stay and try to document and accommodate them in our hierarchies of citizenship and residence.
We also have to accept that, inasmuch as we can try to seal our borders, they can never be 100% foolproof.
People will always slip in illegally, especially as long as South Africa remains an El Dorado for many in Africa and Asia. And once they are here, they will make this their permanent home. Trying to bus, rail or fly them out is a waste of resources.
Our focus should be to make them productive and documented residents of this country. It is all about an attitude change.