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Southern Africa: Migration Policy
Southern Africa: Migration Policy
Date distributed (ymd): 970303
Document reposted by APIC
A BAD NEIGHBOUR POLICY?
MIGRANT LABOUR AND THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA
by Jonathan Crush
Jonathan Crush is the Canadian Project Director of the Southern African
Migration Project. The views expressed in this article are the author's
own and not those of the Project or the funders, the Canadian International
Development Agency. For additional information about the project and other
articles on the same topic, see the list of project partners below, as
well as the Web site of the project at http://www.queensu.ca/samp/
This article was first published in the November 1996 issue of Southern
Africa Report (volume 12, number 1). Southern Africa Report is published
quarterly by TCLSAC, the Toronto Committee for Links between Southern Africa
and Canada, 603 1/2 Parliament St., Toronto, Ontario M4X 1P9 CANADA; tel:
416-967-5562; e-mail: [email protected].
Readers are welcome to reproduce and reference this article as long
as appropriate aknowledgements are given.
Maxine Reitzes has recently argued that immigration has come up from
behind on South Africa's post-apartheid policy-makers. She notes how, in
response, immigration policy is "diverse and inconsistent." Conflicting
public statements, resort to the failed policies of the past, no clear
sense of direction, an absence of constructive public debate, and a failure
to engage with the lessons of the international experience, are all present.
Progress towards a new and more progressive immigration policy has been
slow. More than two years since the 1994 election, there is still no green
paper on immigration [see note below for update] and little of the kind
of consultation and dialogue witnessed in other areas of public life. Immigration
is still governed by the omnibus Aliens Control Act of 1991. The Amended
Act of 1995 is far from being a progressive piece of legislation. Indeed,
as the name suggests, the premise of the Act is tighter controls on immigration
and greater powers of expulsion by the state.
One reason for the lack of movement is that the new South African government
has had to contend with an inherited system of migration and immigration
management. At the same time it has faced a rapidly escalating influx of
undocumented migrants from the Southern African region and further afield.
This has prompted rising demands from interest groups within South Africa
for a "South Africans first" policy in the labour market. Some
employers, particularly the farmers and mining companies, have openly argued
for the right of continued access to foreign labour. Others have made few
public pleas but continue to employ non-South Africans in considerable
numbers. Organized labour has been more equivocal; some call for the outright
expulsion of non-South Africans, others acknowledge the need for some form
of legal access to South Africa by residents of SADC.
There are still significant obstacles to the kind of creative thinking
which would make South African immigration legislation and policy consistent
with the country's new commitment to transparency, human rights and constitutional
guarantees and its stated commitment to regional cooperation and development.
What is required is a fundamental re-evaluation of the purposes of immigration
legislation particularly as it pertains to the migration of Africans to
South Africa.
Forgetting the Past
The South African media and officialdom often seem to forget that formal
and undocumented cross-border migration in Southern Africa did not begin
in 1990. South Africa has long been part of a regional economy and a regional
labour market and cross-border migration needs to be seen in that context.
As part of this system, migrants have been coming to South Africa (and
returning home) from countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Malawi
since the mid-nineteenth century. Draconian controls to try and stop this
movement of migrants from the region have always been spectacularly unsuccessful.
It is a disturbing fact that South African immigration policy is still
largely governed by a piece of legislation from the dark ages of segregation
and apartheid. The origins of the Aliens Control Act are deeply racist
and anti-Semitic. It was originally passed in 1937 to exclude German Jews
fleeing Nazi persecution from coming to South Africa. The virulent antiSemitic
rhetoric that accompanied passage of the Act is curiously reminiscent of
the language heard in some quarters over the last year or two by those
clamouring for tighter controls on "aliens" from the rest of
Africa.
Subsequent amendments to this Act were almost always designed to erect
higher boundaries, to place greater controls on people's mobility, to give
the police greater powers, to circumscribe the legal rights of "aliens"
and to extend the range of people to which the Act applied. These amendments
were invariably accompanied by moral panics in which the country was supposedly
being "swamped" or "polluted" by "floods of "unsuitable"
immigrants. A moral panic not dissimilar to today's prompted the passage
of the original Aliens Act in the 1930s.
Policy by Numbers
Within South Africa, official and popular discourse is obsessed with
the question of how many undocumented migrants there are in the country.
The idea has become embedded in the press and official discourse that there
are between 4 and 11 million "illegals" in the country. These
figures have absolutely no basis in fact. However, their "authenticity"
was given credence by a survey by the Human Sciences Research Council in
1994 and 1995. As international experience shows, counting undocumented
migrants is a largely pointless, because impossible, exercise. The danger
is that in the absence of reliable statistics, officials, politicians,
and members of the general public feel free to use whatever figure they
like to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment.
One illustration of the massive inconsistencies this produces should
suffice. Some South African police sources "reliably" estimate
that there are 8 million undocumented immigrants in South Africa. They
also claim that an "illegal" enters the country every 10 minutes.
Both figures are designed to bolster the idea that a "flood"
of undocumented migrants is pouring into the country. The problem here
is that at the given rate of entry, it would take over 150 years to reach
the given figure of 8 million migrants in the country.
Statistics are not unimportant. There is certainly a need to build a
reliable data base and socio-economic profile of immigrants in order to
test, and if necessary contest, the unsubstantiated claims that are often
made about the harm they cause.
Alien Voices
There is today a blunt, and increasingly bellicose, mythology targeted
at non-South Africans living in the country. This mythology is fuelled
by the public utterances of police, some researchers and certain officials
in government. "Illegals" take jobs, commit crimes, depress wages,
consume RDP resources, spread Aids, and smuggle arms and drugs. Anti-immigrant
myths always generalize from the anti-social behaviours of a few and conveniently
forget about the positive contribution that immigrants can and do make
to a society. The power of a myth is that it does not have to be true for
people to act on it. Anti- immigrant myths produce anti-immigrant behaviour.
Random attacks on non-South African residents of the country, as in communities
like Alexandra, are the almost inevitable result.
South African cities have traditionally acted as melting pots. Despite
the best efforts of apartheid's social engineers to keep people of different
ethnic and language background apart, ethnic tensions and strife have always
been minimal. Racial and ethnic differences were often diluted by the power
of personal contact or subsumed in the common struggle against white oppression.
One of the most troubling feature of post-1994 community attitudes in South
Africa is a surprising tendency in many areas to redefine non-South Africans
as "other", as the causes of economic and social hardship and
as the perpetrators of crime. Nevertheless, some recent surveys have shown
that black South Africans are still much less hostile than their white
counterparts to the presence of African "foreigners" in the country.
Even then, the levels of xenophobia may be considered dangerously high.
Anti-immigrant mythology needs to be systematically deconstructed and debunked.
In its place, there is need for a rigorous analysis of the economic contribution
that immigrants do and could make to host societies, as well as public
education programmes to produce a better-informed public.
Only certain voices are being heard in the debate on immigration. Occasionally
stories surface in the South African media concerning the abysmal treatment
of undocumented immigrants by South African employers or the police. More
often, undocumented immigrants prefer to keep silent for fear of drawing
attention to themselves. Migrants are marginalized and silenced by fear.
Immigrants have no channels by which to articulate their grievances or
contest their treatment in the country. Nor can they present counter-arguments
as to why they think they should be allowed to live and work in South Africa.
There is actually a need to listen to the voices of so-called "aliens".
Why are they here? What do they want? How are they treated? Do they intend
to stay? What do they think they contribute to the new South Africa? Would
they stay if offered the chance? There is a need for a forum in which the
voices of migrants can be heard and evaluated free of fear of persecution
and harassment. Rarely do the objects of legislation not have a chance
to respond and react. "Aliens" have no voice, by definition.
Once a problem is defined, the range of possible solutions is circumscribed.
Once migrants are typecast as "illegals" or "illegal aliens"
-- without regard to differences of age, gender, skill level, resources,
economic activity, length of residence and intended length of stay, place
of residence, motivations, perceptions, and so on -- they are depersonalized,
branded as outsiders and treated as if they are a homogenous group requiring
a uniform policy response. There is clearly an urgent need to rethink the
migration terminology and language which frames current South African policy
and legislation, to develop new definitions and policies consistent with
a human rights approach to migration, to recognize the internal complexity
of the community of migrants, and to give due recognition and reward to
long-term so-called "illegal" residents.
New Moves
In recent months there have been some promising moves in an alternative
direction. First, although there has not yet been a broad-based national,
regional and local consultation on the whole question of immigration, there
are signs that this may soon change. In September 1996, the Department
appointed a special Task Force on Immigration that will report in May 1997.
There is now a much greater chance of the kind of public input and debate
that has not, to date, characterized policy making in the immigration field.
Second, the South African government has offered a limit amnesty to
certain categories of foreign resident. The first was an offer of permanent
residence in October 1995 to long-serving migrant miners who had voted
in the 1994 election. About 40,000 miners availed themselves of this offer;
about one-third of those who were eligible. The reasons for this relatively
low rate of uptake and the consequences of amnesty for the source areas
are the subject of research currently being conducted by the Southern African
Migration Project. The second amnesty was an offer of permanent residence
in June 1996 to undocumented residents from the SADC states who had lived
in South Africa for more than five years. This amnesty was vigorously opposed
and reluctantly implemented by the Department of Home Affairs. The Department
argued that 600,000 people were eligible for the amnesty and that by a
process of family reunification a further 12 million people would be added
to South Africa's population. These figures are highly dubious. By late
September, after a last-minute rush, some 150,000 people had applied countrywide
under this provision. The unresolved issue is what, if anything, to do
about undocumented migrants who came to South Africa after 1991. A more
general amnesty is certainly one option. This would allow undocumented
migrants to regularize their status without necessarily offering rights
of permanent residence.
Third, there is a growing recognition in certain circles of government
that migration is as much a regional as a national issue. The South African
government cannot go-it-alone on this most critical of questions. Bilateral
discussions have been initiated by the Department of Home Affairs with
a number of other SADC states. This is a positive sign provided that the
South African motive is not simply to secure support for applying the Aliens
Control Act on a sub-continental scale.
An alternative model has emerged from within SADC itself. The SADC Draft
Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons in Southern Africa contains easily
the most radical and even visionary model of a future regional migration
regime in Southern Africa. The Protocol, initiated and promoted by the
SADC Secretariat, has run aground on the opposition of South Africa and
Botswana, in particular.
In the words of one South African MP, the Protocol has been "put
back on the shelf." The recent South African Labour Market Commission
cited the Protocol approvingly but backed off from recommending its acceptance
by South Africa following vociferous opposition from the representatives
of organized labour. Immigration is a regional issue requiring regional
thinking and initiative. Whether by taking the Protocol back off the shelf
or through some other mechanism, a multi-lateral and open-ended process
of consultation and dialogue around migration within the SADC community
of nations is now more important than ever.
Southern African Migration Project
Project Partners
CANADA
Queen's University
Southern African Migration Project
11 St. Lawrence Ave., Kingston, ON., K7L 3N6 Fax: (613) 545-2171
Dr. Jonathan Crush
Canadian Project Director
Phone: (613) 545-6963
e-mail: [email protected]
SOUTH AFRICA
Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) National Office
Albion Spring, 1 Albion Close, Main Rd.
Rondebosch, Cape Town
7700, South Africa
Phone: (27-21) 689-8389
Fax: (27-21) 689-3261
Dr. Wilmot James
South African Project Director
e-mail: [email protected]
ZIMBABWE
University of Zimbabwe,
Department of Geography
P.O. Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe
Phone: (26-34) 303-211
Fax: (26-34) 333-407 or 335-249
e-mail: mailto:[email protected]
[Please Note: this e-mail address is not always operational]
Dr. Lovemore Zinyama
Coordinator - Zimbabwe
LESOTHO
Sechaba Consultants, P.O. Box 0183
Maseru West, Lesotho
Phone: 266-316-555
Fax: 266-310-472
e-mail: [email protected]
Thuso Green
Coordinator - Lesotho
MOZAMBIQUE
Arquivo do Patrimonio Cultural (ARPAC)
Rua de Bagamoyo No. 201
Maputo, Republic of Mozambique
Phone: (25-81) 431-366
Fax: (25-81) 423-935
Dr. Luis Covane
Coordinator - Mozambique
e-mail: [email protected]
PROJECT FUNDED BY
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
200 Promenade du Portage
Hull, Quebec
K1A 0G4, Canada
Phone: (819) 997-6100
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca
Green Paper on International Migration
The South African government has appointed a Task Group to produce a
Green Paper on South African immigration policy. The Task Group is currently
consulting broadly and hearing expert inputs from a variety of interested
parties. SAMP is closely involved in this new policy process. The executive
director of IDASA, Dr. Wilmot James, is chair of the Task Group. The expert
research inputs are being coordinated by Dr Jonathan Crush of Queen's University
and Ms Raesibe Mojapelo of IDASA. The draft is scheduled to be ready by
May 1997. For further information about the green paper, including copies
of all briefing papers, see the SA Migration Green Paper Process Pages
at
http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/green_papers/migration/migrate.html
This material is produced and distributed by the Africa Policy Information
Center (APIC), the educational affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa.
APIC's primary objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by providing accessible
policy-relevant information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups
and individuals.
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