CHILDREN of undocumented foreign nationals will not be required to produce any form of identification before registering for admission at any school in South Africa.

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has told its officials that undocumented foreign parents and guardians must be allowed to enrol their children in schools ahead of the start of the 2025 academic year and register for matric examinations even if they do not have the required documents.
Undocumented foreign parents and guardians as well as their children do not require any form of identification before being admitted in South African schools

Basic Education director-general, Mathanzima Mweli, has indicated that the department has received complaints from civil society organisations that learners have been denied admission to schools or were prevented from registering and writing the 2024 final national senior certificate (NSC) examinations due to their failure to, among others, produce an identity document or a birth certificate or, in the case of foreign learners, an asylum seekers permit.
Mweli unequivocally stated that undocumented learners cannot be prevented from registering and writing the NSC examinations.

In addition, he said Umalusi, the government’s education quality assurance council, has also confirmed that an identity document is not compulsory for the issuing of an NSC certificate.
“The policy position of Umalusi is articulated in this statement: ‘Whether documented or not, all registered candidates will be certified if they fulfil the qualification requirements.

“In short, the Identity document is not a requirement for the issuing a certificate’,” Mweli told heads of provincial education departments, provincial governance sections, district directors, school governing body associations, National Alliance of Independent Schools Association (Naisa) and school principals.
He said in instances where the DBE and provincial education departments submit learner information using their names and date of birth, such learners will not be rejected (or denied access to their NSC) if no identity document is submitted.
“All education officials are hereby directed to refrain from any actions or messaging that could result in undocumented learners not being admitted to schools, and thereby dropping out of school or not writing their NSC examinations due to a notion that they will not be issued with the NSC,” Mweli stated, urging that the contents of the December 5, 2024, circular to be shared with all provincial, district and circuit officials as well as school principals.

He said there were various reasons that learners may not have an identity document and these include that they are not South African learners with birth certificates but have not yet applied for their identity documents for reasons beyond their control.
According to Mweli, these learners could be undocumented South African learners waiting for the Department of Home Affairs to finalise their applications for late registration of birth or that their caregivers have not yet lodged applications for birth registration.

Additionally, they are undocumented foreign/immigrant learners or they are foreign/immigrant learners who have a regular status (for example, learners on asylum seekers’ permits who possess asylum numbers) but do not have an identity number.
The recently promulgated Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act, to which President Cyril Ramaphosa assented in September and came into immediate effect in its entirety last month, provides that any learner whose parent or guardian has not provided any required documents, whether of the learner or such adult person acting on behalf of the learner, during the application for admission, shall nonetheless be allowed to attend school.

In terms of the Bela Act, the principal of the school must advise the parent or guardian to secure the required documents.
At the end of last year, thousands of Grades 1 and 8 pupils were still unplaced in Gauteng, with the province’s education MEC Matome Chiloane promising that no learner would be without a classroom this year.
On social media, anti-migrant group Operation Dudula has already indicated that it is ready to start its schools opening programme to ensure that South African children get first preference over those of illegal immigrants as well as oversee the employment of local teachers.

However, Operation Dudula national organiser, Che Serobedi, did not respond to questions at the time of publication.
Naisa secretary-general, Ebrahim Ansur, said the association was aware of the circular even though the DBE is yet to send it to them.

Since the pandemic, many major economies like the United Kingdom have tightened restrictions on visas. Migrant health care workers from Zimbabwe struggle as they must live apart from their children and spouses
Harare, Zimbabwe | Gamuchirai Masiyiwa Global Press Journal Uganda |   When Tanya moved to Ireland for care work in 2022, she was certain of three things: Her family would join her soon. Her husband would find work. And her children would attend a good school. Initially, her move was smooth. Visas and permits were no problem. But once in Ireland, reality proved harsh for Tanya, a Zimbabwean who asked Global Press Journal to use her middle name for fear of jeopardizing her visa status.

The country’s visa restrictions for the general employment permit meant that for her husband to join her, she’d have to earn at least 30,000 euros annually for two years (about 31,500 United States dollars per year). To reunite with each of her three children, she would need to bring in increasingly more.
Tanya earns an income of about 27,000 euros per year (about 28,400 dollars). She spends her time caring for children with autism, but her own children live without her in South Africa.

“I struggle to sleep. I am always emotional. I have become too sensitive and negative towards life,” Tanya says.
Her story is common in a global economy increasingly reliant on migrant workers, who now constitute 4.9% of the global workforce. The demand has risen steadily since 2013 and surged during the pandemic. But as demand increases, so do restrictions on visa policies regarding family members who want to move to be with their spouses or parents in the world’s biggest economies.

Health care workers like Tanya in particular are in high demand. Approximately 15% of the global health care workforce is employed outside their home country or country of training.
The situation is especially pronounced in big economies like the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, where labor shortages and aging populations strain health care systems.

On the supply side, it’s countries with smaller economies like Zimbabwe that are among the main exporters of talent, especially health care talent. The migration of health workers from Zimbabwe is so severe that in 2023, the World Health Organization added it to a “red list” of 55 countries from which international recruitment of health care personnel is discouraged, due to the critically low numbers of health workers remaining to serve their home populations.
Some countries, including Switzerland, the UK, Australia and Denmark, relaxed their visa requirements during the pandemic but have since reverted to previous policies, says Godfrey Kanyenze, director of the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, a research think tank.
There has been a rollback of what Kanyenze calls “sensible arrangements” that had enabled migrant workers to relocate with their families.

In one such reversal, the UK implemented new measures in December 2023 to curtail migration into the country, which then-Home Secretary of State James Cleverly described as “far too high.”

Among the changes is that care workers — who were in such high demand at the onset of the pandemic that the UK had to introduce a special visa for them in 2022 — can no longer relocate with their families.
The policy also increased the salary threshold — or the minimum amount of money one must earn to qualify for the visa — for all migrant workers by close to 50%. Now, migrant workers need to earn at least 38,700 British pounds (about 49,000 dollars) per year to retain their visa status.

In most cases, low-skilled workers such as care workers earn too little to meet these income requirements, says Hilda Tinevimbo Mahumucha, senior legal consultant with Women and Law in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, a gender justice organization.
In 2023, Sweden, a major migration hub, also announced new restrictions on low-skilled labor migration into the country. Scheduled to take effect this year, migrant workers from “third world countries” will be required to earn a monthly minimum of approximately 2,200 euros (about 2,300 dollars) to obtain a work permit, and even higher income requirements to bring family members to join them.

Receiving countries capitalize on the skill sets of migrant workers without bearing any of the costs, especially the cost of training people, says Abel Chikanda, an associate professor at the School of Earth, Environment and Society at McMaster University in Canada.

“[They] are essentially benefitting from human resource that they did not contribute towards,” he says.
For example, in the case of health worker migration, annually, Africa loses about 2 billion dollars invested in medical training when its health workers migrate abroad. Meanwhile, destination countries enjoy substantial savings by bypassing these costs.

The human cost
In the end, it is migrant workers and their families who pay the steepest price, each in their own way.
Senzeni Chiutsi, a psychologist based in Harare, says that while migration allows parents a chance to support their families economically, the children they leave behind are prone to stress and trauma.

A 2018 study on the effects of migration on children and adolescents left behind by their parents noted signs of depression and loneliness. And 8 in 10 of those interviewed reported having once considered suicide.
Already, the distance between Tanya and her children is widening. On the rare occasions she visits them, her 9-year-old son finds more comfort in video games, while her two girls remain behind the closed doors of their bedrooms.
“One time when I went there, my second child said, ‘Mommy … I don’t even know [the last time] I was hugged,’” Tanya says.
Although she stays in touch through phone calls, it is difficult because of the time difference and her working hours. By the time she is home, her children are already asleep.

The emotional cost of being abroad is just too high, she says.
“One of my friends normally jokes about how we were given the wrong information coming here,” she says. “If you’re doing well in Zimbabwe … I don’t see a need of coming here.”

That’s a big question mark. Most people move because their governments have failed to keep their end of the bargain by providing workers with fair conditions such as adequate pay, says Chikanda, the professor.
If Tanya were employed as a care worker in Zimbabwe, she would earn an annual income of about 4,284 dollars — a sixth of what she is earning abroad.

Even so, she’s set a deadline for herself of this year to return to her family if they can’t join her in Ireland.
“What if they’ll be broken adults?” she says. “It’s not like I’m going to be rich, to be honest.

Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber has highlighted the ongoing efforts of the department, despite resource constraints.
South Africa has intensified its crackdown on undocumented migrants in recent months, underscoring a commitment to uphold the rule of law.

Emphasising the seriousness of these efforts, home affairs minister Leon Schreiber said: “Let the message spread far and wide: the rule of law is not optional in South Africa.
“Tonight, people are behind bars because they thought they could play games with our immigration laws. Criminals better beware of the modernised and effective Team Home Affairs we are building.” 

This comes after home affairs raided the infamous Babel restaurant in Menlyn, Pretoria, over allegations of exploitation by one of its former employees. Two employees were charged for working without having the necessary documentation to work in South Africa.  The employer was charged for employing undocumented immigrants.

Schreiber highlighted the ongoing efforts of his department despite scarce resources. “Despite resource constraints, Team Home Affairs continues to ramp up operations to restore the rule of law. Our immigration officers are on the ground with other agencies as we speak. Those who violate our laws better watch out because we are building a stronger home affairs,” he said.
Crime stats presented by former Gauteng police commissioner Elias Mawela for the first quarter of 2023 revealed the scale of the challenge.“For the period under review, we have arrested a total of 9,393 undocumented people,” he said.
“Some of them are linked to illegal mining. The DPCI [Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation] has also arrested 89 suspects from their 40 high-level operations. The work is continuing.”

The “Migration Profile Report” released in March by Stats SA provides further insight into immigration trends in South Africa. The report indicates that the majority of migrants entering South Africa come from countries in the Sadc region. In 2022 this region accounted for 83.7% of the total immigrant population — in contrast to the 4.9% from the UK and Europe, down from 22.3% in 2001.

Employment trends reveal that the proportion of employed immigrants in the workforce has increased from 6.0% in Q3 of 2012 to 8.9% in Q3 of 2022. Stats SA notes that immigrants are predominantly employed in private households (18.4%), followed by construction (17.2%) and wholesale and retail trade (13.6%).
Labour migration often stems from conditions such as poverty, unemployment, political instability or discrimination in the their home countries. According to Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) data, the unemployment rate among immigrants was 15.6% in 2012, increasing slightly to 18.4% in 2017 before dropping marginally to 18.2% by 2022.
The labour force participation rate (LFPR) for immigrants showed a slight decrease from 77.5% in 2012 to 77.3% in 2017, with a modest increase to 78.3% in 2022.

Stats SA also highlighted the complexities associated with labour migration, including exploitation, discrimination and unsafe working conditions. “Migrants may face exploitation, discrimination and abuse, including unsafe working conditions, low wages and violations of their human rights,” said Stats SA.

“Labour migration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that plays a crucial role in shaping societies and economies around the world. While it offers opportunities for economic advancement and cultural exchange, it also poses significant challenges that require co-ordinated and comprehensive responses at local, national and international levels.”

Two police sergeants, Ethel Ndifheleni Baloyi and John Moeketsi Maoba, both aged 42, have been arrested and charged on 12 counts of fraud and 12 counts of defeating the administration of justice.
Gauteng spokesperson for the Hawks, Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd Ramovha said the police officers were allegedly submitting fraudulent Department of Home Affairs statements, resulting in the release of suspected illegal immigrants.
The foreign nationals released on bail would subsequently evade trial.

Two police sergeants, Ethel Ndifheleni Baloyi and John Moeketsi Maoba, have been released on R1,000 bail each.
“It is with a sense of duty and commitment to justice that we report the successful execution of arrest warrants for two police officials implicated in serious crimes,” said Ramovha.
“They were arrested on Friday, 17 January 2025, following an investigation into a criminal case that was registered at Bekkersdal police station in February 2024.”
The Hawks’ serious corruption investigation ensued shortly after a complaint was lodged by a representative of the Westonaria court.

Ramovha said the allegations made by the court official were based on suspicion of fraudulent activities and obstruction of justice by the pair of police officers who are both stationed at Bekkersdal police station, in Westonaria.
 “The officers were accused of submitting fraudulent Home Affairs statements, resulting in the release of suspected illegal immigrants on bail who subsequently evaded trial. A thorough investigation by West Rand-based serious corruption investigation confirmed the fraudulent nature of the statements,” said Ramovha.
The matter was then referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who determined that the police officers should be prosecuted.

They appeared in the Randfontein Magistrate’s Court on Monday, and their bail application was heard on Tuesday.
Sergeants Baloyi and Maoba were granted R1,000 bail each. The matter was postponed to February 27.
Meanwhile, Gauteng head of the Hawks, Major General Ebrahim Kadwa has welcomed the arrest.
“This statement reflects our unwavering commitment to upholding justice and integrity within our ranks,” said Kadwa