SA’s immigration crisis needs tough but rational solutions – here are
a few
Daily Maverick – 07 September 2022
Limpopo Health MEC Phophi Ramathuba has made news for admonishing a sick
Zimbabwean patient at a government hospital. The incident sparked a mostly
vitriolic debate, almost all aspects of which have demonstrated a general state
of brokenness from which we will not recover unless we are honest and
systematic in our approach.
Immigration is a very serious issue, which the ANC
government has mishandled for a long time. It is now likely to become a cheap
but dangerous vote-catching net for populist demagogues with no lawful, practical
solutions. It is also increasingly likely that we are just one incident away
from an orgy of violence against foreign nationals, Zimbabweans in particular.
Before I propose a few practical steps towards a solution, it is
important to place a few issues on the table, as avoiding them will perpetuate
an unprincipled discourse, such as what we now have.
Admonishing a sick person – especially while being recorded for later
public spectacle – is inconsistent with respecting the dignity of all persons, South
African or not. It may speak to our deepest frustrations about the state of the
country, but the responsibility of leadership means those entrusted with
positions of power and influence must be careful to not behave in a manner that
changes for the worse, the very moral character of our nation.
I do not want to live in a country whose people will one day celebrate
when a human being is left to die in the corridors of a hospital because they
are an undocumented, foreign national. Such a prospect may cause some people
satisfaction, but it would simultaneously dehumanise the officials tasked with
ignoring people dying right next to them.
It also invokes painful memories of the way black patients are often
treated by nurses at many of our public hospitals. There are even satirical
TikTok videos where young people display the same uncaring attitude as that
displayed by Ramathuba. We must reflect on whether these daily humiliations
have not transformed some of us into the very thing we detest.
It is common cause that most of the hostility is directed towards
Zimbabweans. We did not get to this intense anti-Zimbabwean sentiment by
accident. This situation was created through political and moral dishonesty, as
well as deeply embedded corruption and incompetence over a period of about 20
years.
The crisis of state brutality and repression in Zimbabwe exploded into
the global spotlight in the late 1990s when students hit the streets in
protest, later followed by trade unions. By the early 2000s, there was pressure
on South Africa – as the de facto democratic “light on the hill” – to take the
lead in resolving the issue. Instead, the government of President Thabo Mbeki
expended significant energy denying the existence of a crisis and admonishing
anyone who proposed there was one.
It was at this time that he uttered the now infamous, “Crisis? What
crisis?” This, as Zimbabweans fled across the border in their droves as
beatings, detention, torture and extrajudicial killings became par for the
course. I recall vividly some of the local debate when the late Morgan
Tsvangirai came out of police detention swollen, limping badly and wearing torn
clothes.
For leading the fight for a political alternative in Zimbabwe, he was
branded “a puppet of the West” who apparently deserved, along with thousands of
his supporters, to be brutalised. Some locals even cheered as this occurred
alongside farm invasions.
Around 2003, a large Cosatu delegation was evicted from Zimbabwe and not
allowed to conduct its fact-finding mission. The current chairman of the ANC,
Gwede Mantashe, then general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers,
and Zwelinzima Vavi were in that delegation. For the rest of the tripartite
alliance, it was convenient for them to pretend the crisis did not exist.
Political choices have consequences, and the complaint we now hear about
there being “too many Zimbabweans” in South Africa is partly of our own making
through wilful ignorance and dishonest brokering.
Zimbabweans did not fall from the sky for no reason at all. We saw this
coming and chose to look away, and for that we must take responsibility and
seek solutions more honestly than we have before.
This is not to suggest that South Africa must wage a democratic struggle
on behalf of Zimbabweans, but it is also dishonest to engage in fake neutrality
that effectively perpetuates and legitimises the injustice and then cry like a
spoilt baby when the chickens come home to roost.
What we complain about in respect of Zimbabweans will come to pass in
the case of Swatis, who are also suffering under terrible repression by their
king while we play dictatorship pal, as our government is prone to
do.
Steps towards a solution
In my view, there are a few difficult steps that need to be taken. The
first is to change the tone of engagement with the Zimbabwean government from
one of slavish persuasion to one seeking to solve what has become a potentially
explosive internal driver of instability in South Africa.
We must make it clear that normal relations cannot continue between
Zimbabwe and South Africa, with the latter having to shoulder the fallout of
repression and misrule. If our offer to broker a real democratic solution is
rejected, we must distance ourselves from that government.
Second, we must invest in border control and security. Expelling
migrants who will simply walk back in a few weeks later is an exercise in
futility. To do this effectively, we must also accept that the SANDF is weak
and unable to perform its most basic functions, while the police force is riddled
with corruption. Reforming and recapacitating both are key to effective border
control and security.
Third, we must fix our broken immigration system. In addition to porous
borders, the processing of asylum and other applications are an absolute
abortion. Applications for highly skilled worker permits take forever, while
low-skills roles in various sectors are filled by non-South Africans – it
boggles the mind how the latter are processed so quickly while key skills are
caught in a gridlock.
The situation is even more ridiculous with business visas, where, for
instance, highly skilled Kenyans coming here on business are frequently treated
like criminals and given limited period visas, while criminals and terrorists
simply walk in and stay.
Fourth, we must begin a massive initiative of normalisation of
immigrants – “normalisation” in the sense that every undocumented migrant must
be given a timeframe in which to register and make a formal application for
citizenship, work permit or asylum. This must be prefaced by a proper
administrative system and capacity to make this happen as quickly as possible.
Such an effort must be pragmatic and humane, and take account of
situations where undocumented migrants have intermarried and have children who
know no country other than South Africa. Other countries have had to deal with
the same.
Anyone who does not qualify on a range of criteria can be deported to
then apply from their home country but, as stated earlier, this cannot work if
the borders are porous.
Fifth, South Africa’s labour laws must be applied as required by
statute.
People who secure work permits must either be highly skilled workers or
refugees in terms of international and domestic law. The chaos we see where we
can’t tell who falls within which category is merely a symptom of how the
endemic corruption, neglect and incompetence of the past 15 years have
decimated the civil service.
Uncontrolled immigration and related crimes are not a sign of
disrespectful Zimbabweans and other nationals, but a symptom of a broken,
corrupt state that has driven the economy to the brink of collapse and allowed
crime to fester. A desperate South African population looking for jobs to put
food on the table, and under siege from rampant crime, will inevitably resort
to some form of vigilantism.
That means accepting the same level of responsibility we demand that
Zimbabweans do in their own country, where we blame them for re-electing
Zanu-PF. We do the same with the ANC here and expect to get a different
outcome.
Ultimately, all these problems and solutions need a political class that
fully appreciates its strategic challenges and has the capacity to deal with
them instead of making populist interventions for cheap political points, while
doing little or nothing to move the needle on any of them.
Far from being a hero, Phophi Ramathuba is a very public face of the
incapacity we rely on – and that is untenable
www.samigration.com
