Like a deer in the headlights
City Press – 11 April 2022
Listening to Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi and some of his Cabinet colleagues talking about the immigration question, you could be forgiven for believing that they were powerless folk.
It is as if the crisis of illegal immigration and the pressure it puts on public resources and services just miraculously happened.
You would also swear that nobody foresaw the violent backlash from working class South Africans against foreign nationals.
Motsoaledi was on JJ Tabane’s show Power to Truth on TV channel eNCA this week, pontificating about this crisis.
It is really bizarre that government seems to be waking up to this tinderbox issue only now that the populists and vigilantes are fanning the flames of hate towards immigrants and taking the law into their own hands.
One of the myriad disasters of those who have run our country for the past 28 years is the failure to manage immigration.
We say this recognising that the illegal movement of people across the borders is inevitable, as South Africa is perceived as an island of prosperity on the continent.
With wave after wave of undocumented immigrants flowing into the country and making this their home, government has been like a deer caught in the headlights.
Besides the pointless exercise of arresting those who are undocumented and deporting them, very little sustainable work is done to manage the crisis. The borders have remained porous, enabling the deported to immediately make their way back to South Africa as soon as they have said their hellos to their families and friends.
Government even failed to heed the bloody warnings of the massive xenophobic outbreaks in 2008 and 2015, and the sporadic flare-ups that take place from time to time in different locales.
Now government has promised to intensify its border management efforts. But that only tackles the inflow of the new immigrants.
The question is: What can be done about the millions of undocumented immigrants who are already in the country and are the targets of populists who prey on the grievances of the poor?
The opportunists who are waging a campaign of vigilantism are filling a leadership vacuum left by government’s paralysis.
