Why South Africa is closing its doors to migrants it once welcomed
Yahoo – 14 August 2022
When Petunia Sibanda came to South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2003, she arrived the way most people she knew did in those days – late at night, crossing over a dry patch of the Limpopo River that slices the two countries from each other, pretending not to see the crocodiles in the distance.
For several years, she lived her life in South Africa on the margins, constantly afraid her lack of legal status would be found out and she would be sent back home to a country where the economy was in free fall.
Then Ms. Sibanda found a lifeline. In 2011, she heard about a special visa for Zimbabweans, which would allow them to live and work in South Africa legally.
“I could live freely for the first time,” she says.
But the reprieve was always temporary. Last November, the South African government confirmed that it would no longer renew the 178,000 so-called Zimbabwe Exemption Permits it had issued. All ZEP holders, including Ms. Sibanda, had until the end of 2022 to get a different visa, or leave the country permanently.
Ms. Sibanda and tens of thousands of others in her position now face an existential question. Do they stay in the country where they have made their lives for the last decade, starting families and businesses, and become undocumented? Or do they return to the country they fled all those years ago, where conditions are perhaps even worse than a decade ago? How South Africa handles the issue in the coming months will set the tone in a region that, like elsewhere in the world, is grappling with growing xenophobia amid shrinking resources.
“We love our country, but we have nothing to go back to,” says Ms. Sibanda, whose four children were all born in South Africa.
Political points
Immigration has long been a hot-button political issue in South Africa. The country’s relative wealth, developed industries, and expansive legal rights for foreigners – at least on paper