Mthobeli Jiwulane
Recently 89 nationals from Ethiopia and Eritrea enroute to South Africa were intercepted by authorities in Kenya in what is seen as a tip of the iceberg for such migrants in South Africa.
Amongst them were said to be dangerous, trained militants who threatened the police who arrested them. It goes without saying the dangers they posed to South Africa, their intended destination.
As if this was not enough, in one of numerous incidents of this nature, an attempt was made to traffic 443 children into South Africa from the neighbouring Zimbabwe. Last month a woman was caught in Kimberley in the Northern Cape province while transporting 14 undocumented children from Zimbabwe, some as young as eight years of age, on her way to Cape Town. It was not clear what those children were going to do in Cape Town but it was suspected they were to be used either as street-light burgers in the city or in child labour, or even in child pornography.
This is in addition to 30 Afghanistan nationals who early this year travelled all the way from their country via several other countries including Pakistan to seek asylum in South Africa. They claimed to run away from Taliban which had taken over in the country after the American troop withdrawal after 20 years of occupation. Strangely their movement happened almost two years after the Taliban had taken over and that raised the question as to where had they been all along?
On arrival at the Beit Bridge border post between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the group were sent back to Zimbabwe, only to reappear at the centre a few weeks later to demand to be allowed to pass. They were assisted in their attempt to go through by an unnamed American non-governmental organisation and local South African law firm.
Through the lawyers, the group approached the high court in Pretoria and won the right of entry relying on international law that bound South Africa to let them in. The court forced the country to grant them some temporary visas to transit to Cape Town citing an obligation by South Africa to comply with the international law as a signatory. Since the Afghans went to Cape Town, their actual whereabouts remained unknown as the South African authorities kept quiet about the issue since then.
It shocked the country’s concerned Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi that these particular migrants jumped other countries in order to reach South Africa specifically. This is the issue, believed to be a legislative loophole that Motsoaledi, is grappling with and desperate to change.
The question in the lips of many has been why South Africa is being targeted for illicit activities such as human trafficking, the transportation of counterfeit and stolen goods, movement of illegal or undocumented immigrants and unsolicited asylum seekers. The answer is not hard to find, South Africa is a heaven for such activities because its immigration laws are not up to scratch while its constitution is seen as being over-liberal on rights including the migrant rights.
An expert, Professor Lesiba Teffo has suggested that the country’s constitution should be amended to ease the burden on its systems. Otherwise, Teffo, who serves on the Department’s migrants’ appeal board, believes there were many who took advantage of the unstable system.
For the last 30 years since the dawn of democracy and ushering in of black rule in South Africa, it had been a free-for-all on the South Africa borders. There had been no proper control on its ports of entry especially the land-based entry points which saw a rise in human trafficking and illegal transportation of goods by gangs, a collaboration of local and foreign traffickers.
It is also suspected that some countries legitimately use the slack systems in South Africa to solve their own migration issues. For instance, it is believed that the Afghan migrants were being moved from that country by US because the South Africa’s laws were easy to bypass. It was rumoured that the Afghan migrants had collaborated with America against Taliban, some serving as spies and involved in other activities to prop up the 20-year US occupation of the country.
Some believed the migrants were brought to South Africa secretly in a migrant sale deal similar to the controversial British-Rwandan arrangement. But all these could not be verified.
Since it achieved its post-apartheid freedom and negotiated constitutional democracy, South Africa had become a source of attraction to the outside world in positive and negative ways. Nationals from poorer neighbouring countries form the majority of migrants who cross the borders to make a living in South Africa. This despite the fact that in all the neighbouring countries political repression is no longer an issue. The only time of exodus happens in Zimbabwe when supporters of the opposition parties are forced to flee the country during an election due to harassment by the state apparatus and by supporters of the ruling party, the Zimbabwean African National Unity-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). But most Zimbabweans who jump the razor wire fencing into South Africa on a daily basis had nothing to do with repression back home but were merely seeking better economic conditions such as labour jobs and to enjoy better welfare and educational services in South Africa.
Unlike South Africa, other African countries apply strict measures to prevent illegal migrants from entering their shores.
But what makes South Africa different from others with its migration situation worsening instead of improving? Many blame the poor administration and corrupt governance of the ruling African National Congress, justifiably so.
Excited by the newly found freedom after more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid, the ANC government failed enact a policy to control any movements through its borders. Even to date such a law does not exist.
According to Teffo, it was no mistake that South Africa had such a chaotic migration system. He said the ANC government, on assuming power in 1994, “believed were smarter than other all liberation movements” in Africa and wanted to be different by allowing just anyone to enter the country. “You cannot decide to let all migrants to simply walk into the country without having any control or legislation in place. There is nothing wrong in using legislation to control the movement of migrants because that is international practice,” Teffo says.
According to him the migration crisis besetting the country was of ANC’s own making. “They thought they were triumphalist, they thought they were different from other liberation movements and from the whole of humanity. This is because they live under the dream that South Africa belongs to all who live in it,” Teffo says.
But what has become clear is that some of the countries within the Southern Africa Development Community with which South Africa shared common borders, were aware of the weaknesses of the South African system. Some unscrupulous officials based at the neighbouring country’s port of entry, would let through undocumented migrants, perhaps, as it was rumoured, after some money has changed hands.
Besides, there were parts of the borders especially in Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana where foreign residents just walked into the South African side of the boundary without being detected, because those gaps had not been patrolled for at least three decades since 1994.
These bushy walk-ways, usually unmonitored by authorities, were used by thieves to transport stolen goods such as vehicles, live-stock stolen from border-side farmers and residents. The human traffickers and undocumented migrants also come through this way. For instance, the Maseru-Bloemfontein route and the Mozambique-South African route via Mpumalanga province were notorious for the movement of vehicles stolen from South Africa businesses, in the streets and in the residential homes. The border towns like Ficksburg, Ladybrand and Wepener in the Free State are no-go areas for stock and vehicle owners and crime. Farmers and residents live in fear and on guard due to regular theft of their vehicles and animals.
Gangs from inside and outside South Africa take advantage of the country’s flawed system and corrupt officials who often demand bribes from criminals to let them through.
The local taxi industry saw an opportunity for a lucrative business to transport illegal migrants from the border to different destinations mainly in the big cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria after they had crossed under razor-wire fencing erected by the government. Some taxi operators were frequently seen parking their vehicles in the bushes near the fence’s open gaps where there was a high concentration of illegal crossers.
South Africa does not have walls separating it with its neighbours and does not have refugee camps to keep migrants. But the country allowed them to mingle with the local population.
This free-for-all approach by politicians once annoyed the late Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, who favoured strict application of the law to control migrants. The monarch was worried about foreign habits that came with migrants such as drug trafficking and increased prostitution and cultural instability.
The SADC countries operate on the basis of brotherhood where top leaders avoid criticising each other in the name of ‘not interfering in another country’s internal affairs’. As a result, there was an understanding that people should be free to cross within Africa albeit this is informal.
This approach is always one-sided because only South Africa tended to bear the brunt of receiving masses of undocumented migrants from its neighbours and not the other way around.
Illegality in migration is not confined to the actual crossing of the border but corruption is part of the game. When inside the country, undocumented and illegal migrants were able to get the South African identity documents through bribing officials at home affairs to facilitate attainment of such a document. Before they got papers many migrants spend time dodging customs, some of whom also make the migrants pay “protection fee”, which is a spot fine or a bribe to let them stay illegal in the country.
The fee paid ranges from R50 to R200 for low end or poor individuals caught in the streets to between R500 and R2000 for high end migrants whose documents had expired or lost. The fee ranges between R5000 and R10 000 for businesses that operate illegally or without permit in South Africa.
Often there was tension between locals and foreign national as they compete for meagre resources. Many migrants, especially the undocumented ones, often sit with local job-seekers along the urban streets competing with them for scarce labour jobs such semi-artisanal jobs like carpentry, painting and some gardeners. There were those who sold goods in the streets alongside local hawkers and they compete for space and attention of their customers.
The Ethiopian and Pakistani migrants favoured opening groceries businesses in the townships and working class urban suburbs while Zimbabwean were known for running street-side hair salons. The same Zimbabweans, due to cheap labour, were preferred by local employers running car wash businesses, fuel stations and domestic work. The Nigerians operated city hair-salons, internet cafés, property and often involved illicit activities, such as drug peddling which gained them notoriety in the country.
Against this backdrop, Minister Motsoaledi is left with the burden to correct all the mistakes made by the ruling party on immigration. He had not been getting support from the party until late last year when he took the matter to the ANC national conference where his proposals to overhaul the entire migration system including the implementation of strict immigration policy was adopted as a conference resolution. That gave hope that at last something will be done to address the problem.
Now the White Paper on migration has recently been approved by Cabinet and finally in the next year or two, the country would have its first clear and comprehensive all-encompassing migration policy. The overhauling process would also involve South Africa withdrawing from all international migration protocol, so that the country could start afresh and become a signatory again but under certain conditions to prevent an exodus of illegal migrants through its borders.
In the meantime, the Border Management Board complete with border patrollers has been established to take charge of the entire migration situation. The borders were being patrolled but the system was still far from operating optimally because the legislative framework was yet to be passed into law and implemented.