The issue of migrant
workers could have serious implications for 2024 elections
Fin24 – 16 Feb 2022
For
South African political parties grappling with the idea of coalition politics
ahead of 2024, the issue of migrant workers may be the most crucial of all
deliberations, says Khaya Sithole.
Just over 30 years ago this
month during an interview on Larry King Live, Ross Perot decided to put
up his hand and run for the US presidency.
Perot's profile as a
billionaire who was not part of the Washington establishment but simply wanted
to change the way the establishment worked, had significant consequences for
the 1992 elections and, as it turned out, for the 2016 US election campaign.
At the heart of Perot's
message, was the idea that the other contenders – George HW Bush and Bill
Clinton, were too entrenched in the establishment to actually fix it.
As it turned out, that
election campaign coincided with the ongoing deliberations around the trade
agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada. The most contentious points
related to the impact of the proposed agreement on US jobs.
As the US labour market had
evolved over time and offered various protections and guaranteed to workers,
the labour force of Mexico had little in the way of such protections. The
question of whether freeing up the trade border would create an incentive for
US businesses to shift their operations across the Mexico, was the most
polarising element of the debate.
One the one hand, the view
was that globalism and globalisation rather than protectionism, are always good
things that the US needed to champion. The predicted positive effects of the
proposed agreement – the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – included
a turbocharging of trade activity across the three nations.
The unknown variable was
whether the integration of trade partners with such vastly different profiles –
the US and Canada on one side and Mexico on the other side, would not lead to a
one-way exodus of jobs in the direction of Mexico in pursuit of lower
production costs.
The presidential contenders
also took a bite at trying to crystallise the impact of NAFTA. Clinton – who
would eventually emerge as the winner of the election in November 1992 –
predicted that NAFTA would result in an export boom for Mexico and that could
generate up to 200 000 additional jobs by 1995 and a million jobs within
the first five years of the agreement.
Bush – dealing with the
aftermath of the Gulf War and the declining economic prospects of the US
economy facing increasing unemployment, was far less decisive on the NAFTA
question. Perot used the first presidential debate to predict that NAFTA would
result in a giant sucking sound of jobs moving southward to Mexico.
The predictions of each of
the candidates were not altogether accurate. As the trade borders opened up,
one of the fundamental risks – that Mexican wages would remain low rather than
rise up to US standards - became a persistent reality.
That on its own stifled the
ability of the Mexican economy to grow. The automobile sector in particular,
which has always been the bedrock of the North American economies, provided the
most granular insights into the effect of NAFTA.
At the end of 2016, the
Centre for Automotive Research estimated that 55% of light vehicles produced in
Mexico were for the US market. This implied that automotive manufacturers had
indeed used NAFTA as the basis for shifting some production capacity across to
Mexico.
The Economic Policy
Institute predicted that over 700 000 US workers were displaced by the
implementation of the NAFTA agreement – with Mexican workers the primary
beneficiaries of this displacement.
Regrettably, Mexican wages
remained low and hence the predicted rise in wages for Mexican workers did not
materialise.
Such variables were
important many years after Perot's presidential run, when Donald Trump promised
to withdraw from NAFTA if he were to be elected.
Trump's narrative centred
on the fact that those US workers who had lost jobs in the automotive sector
could simply identify NAFTA as the original source of their plight and
resultant plague of unemployment.
For communities dependent
on the automotive sector, such sentiments resonated strongly and materially
influenced the election of Trump. The crux of Trump's presidency was using
xenophobic overtones regarding Mexicans in order to push for a revision of
NAFTA.
That process consumed the
bulk of his presidency and was eventually finalised at the beginning of 2020,
which turned out to be the valedictory year of his presidency.
The tensions between trade,
politics and labour migration have become a topical issue in South Africa in
recent months.
As luck would have it, it
was the involvement of a multimillionaire businessman in national politics that
reignited the debate. Herman Mashaba – who previously served as mayor of
Johannesburg under a DA ticket, launched a new political party, Action SA,
ahead of the local government elections.
A key message of the
campaign, and something Mashaba had championed during his time at City Hall,
was the need to deal with illegal immigration in South Africa. The profile of
immigrants in South Africa remains a poorly understood picture for various
reasons.
Firstly, the porous nature
of our borders, where the question of financial resources is the decisive
factor between accessing South Africa or not, makes it remarkably difficult to
get an accurate assessment of the profile of immigrant citizens.
When former finance
minister Tito Mboweni tweeted in April 2020 that "almost 100% of
restaurant workers were foreigners", it ignited heated debates across the
Twitter sphere. Obviously, his calculation was completely wrong, but crucially,
when Africa Check sough to get a more accurate picture of the
prevalence of foreign workers in that sector, it concluded that
while the number of foreign-born workers in the restaurant sector had been as
high as 11.3% in 2011, that number had declined to just 6.5% by 2017.
Secondly, the immediate
problem with the assessment of foreign workers in the restaurant industry is
that it relies on the type of disclosures that are not universally practised –
especially in relation to undocumented workers and migrants.
While Africa Check cites Statistics
South Africa as the primary source of the data, it is unavoidable to note that
workers who are not documented are unlikely to voluntarily participate in any
data-gathering exercise for fear of reprisals.
Similarly for employers who
have undocumented immigrants on staff, such disclosures are likely to be seen
as self-defeating. As a result, we known that the number exists somewhere in
the spectrum of Mboweni's hyperbole and Africa Check's conclusions.
The bigger problem in South
Africa is the fact that just like in the US automotive sector, some sectors do
indeed experience a higher prevalence of foreign workers – both documented and
undocumented – that participate in the economic value chain. This is where
anecdotal observations and empirical facts intersect – often with conflicting
interpretations.
For a young person unable
to access an economic opportunity, observing non-South Africans occupying those
jobs can elicit curiosity that often mutates to resentment. This is worsened
where the country's policy around migration and foreign workers is poorly
understood.
Industries characterised by
lax compliance with labour laws, provide a fertile ground for both workers and
employers who wish to evade the net of scrutiny, to continuously practice policies
that are not aligned to the laws of the land.
Within the economic value
chain, sectors like the hospitality sector, where the definition of a job may
be an ad-hoc assignment that requires little in the way of formal
documentation, are likely to experience such realities more acutely than highly
regulated sectors.
This creates a possibility
that the anecdotal experiences of citizens on the ground – whether they feel
more foreigners are competing with them for jobs or any other contention – are
unlikely to be validated by empirical data as evidenced in the case study of
the restaurant sector.
The use of tested data –
which simply suggests that the issue is exaggerated - does little to quell the
tensions of those living with the daily squeeze of displacement.
The unavoidable effect is
the increased tensions across society. At the end of 2021, Home Affairs
Minister Aaron Motsoaledi announced that the Zimbabwean exemption permits would
be coming to an end.
Naturally, such an
announcement generated hysteria and panic among those affected. To some, the
minister seemed to be getting on the anti-immigration bandwagon that Mashaba
was accused of championing.
Surprisingly, that seemed
to miss the crucial tenets of Mashaba's stance and that of the EFF under Julius
Malema. In Mashaba's utterances, the distinction between legal and illegal
immigration is the pivot point.
The anecdotal evidence –
which resonates with many property owners whose buildings may have been
hijacked by individuals both foreign and local; and inner-city citizens who
feel that there is a significant presence of foreigners in their midst - is
that there is an immigration problem.
On the other end of the
spectrum, the EFF's position on open borders is derided as an invitation to
further displacement for South African workers. Both interpretations seem to be
straying from the central essence of what the two parties – admittedly led by
leaders whose articulation capacity on the issue are clearly problematic – are
trying to actually say.
For Action SA, the idea of
regularising immigrants is something that even Motsoaledi has championed since
his days as health minister. In his previous role, Motsoaledi lamented the
inability to allocate resources adequately across the health ecosystem, when
one is unable to predict utilisation of such facilities.
Given the constitutional
requirements around access to healthcare and the Hippocratic oath itself, a
health system is likely to suffer the most acute effects of the impact of
undocumented immigrants who cannot be denied access to healthcare facilities.
Similarly, when buildings are hijacked, both by local and foreign hijackers,
steps to correct that are indeed sensible.
The instinctive reaction to
brand the Action SA approach as xenophobic serves little to advance the debate.
Rather, it is seen as a tool for shutting down the conversation entirely.
The problem with tha, is
that there are far too many citizens whose experiences of the system resonate
with the issues Action SA seeks to raise. Its electoral performance in the 2021
local government elections indicates what some sections of the electorate are
persuaded by the party's stance on illegal immigration.
The EFF, on the other hand,
suffers from the effects of the disconnect between its stance and the actual
reality of labour migration patterns and the country's policy on migration. The
idea of opening up borders among trade partners is not actually an invention of
Malema himself. Rather, it is a reflection of practices across the different
trade blocs in the world. The European Union's open border policy is an example
of this.
The fundamental flaw in the
EFF's pronouncements is that in the absence of a clear trade policy across
neighbouring states that defines the purpose and regulations, calling for open
borders is premature.
The African Continental
Free Trade Agreement is an example of an economic policy that seeks to
gradually reduce trade barriers across the continent at large. The idea that
the movement of citizens in the long run will follow the same pattern, is not
altogether far-fetched.
But for as long as South
Africa has an employment crisis, any idea that increases possibilities of
displacement for local citizens is simply untenable politically.
A common response to the
current crisis is that the deportation of one does not create a job for
another. That of course shifts the debate on to the known reality that there
aren't enough jobs to begin with.
However, the displacement
question – where those out of the jobs net feel their chances would be improved
if there were fewer foreigners, particularly undocumented ones, to compete with
– needs to be addressed rather than dismissed.
Since Motsoaledi's
announcement on Zimbabwe exemption permits (ZEPs), accusations of xenophobia
and Afrophobia have escalated. The point that seems to have been missed is that
the very origination of the permits was not a result of a committed policy to
enable easier labour migration across the two countries.
Rather, it became yet
another cop-out by the government of the day that found it easier to regularise
the many Zimbabwean citizens who had been displaced by the political turmoil of
the late 2000s; rather than condemn the Mugabe regime for having created the
crisis.
The sobering reality is
that no clear policy balancing the social, economic and political
considerations of the ZEP regime was cogently crafted. As a result, the various
administrations have perpetually renewed the permits with the hope that the
tension points would organically disappear.
Unfortunately for South
Africa, that model is no longer tenable and difficult conversations around how
to manage to effects of the rising tensions between disaffected citizens
fearing continuous displacement, and the immigrants seeking a better future for
themselves, are now overdue.
The political implications
of getting this conversation right are not without precedent. At the end of the
1992 US presidential elections, Perot emerged with the best third-man
performance in US elections since Roosevelt 80 years earlier.
His 19% poll resulted in
neither of the main candidates receiving a majority of the ballot. For South
African political parties grappling with the idea of coalition politics ahead
of 2024, this is just one of the key conversations they need to address.
Given its polarising
nature, it may be the most crucial of all deliberations ahead of 2024,
particularly if the current administration does little to address the jobs
crisis.
www.samigration.com
