Migrant problem is ‘of ANC’s own making’

South Africa is paying the price for the ANC’s decision to open the borders to migrants.

Now, the immigration system has to be overhauled, including withdrawing membership of international conventions, to correct the blunder. SA will rejoin these conventions later.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said it had all been a mistake.

But political analyst Prof Lesiba Teffo said in fact it was not a mistake and that the ANC government thought they were smarter than other liberation movements that came to power in their countries before it, when it decided that migrants could enter the country without being controlled by legislation.

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He said the migration problem was of ANC’s own making.

“They thought they were different from other liberation movements and different to the whole of humanity.

“This is because they live under the dream that SA belongs to all who live in it.

“There is nothing wrong with using legislation to control the movement of migrants. That is international practice,” Teffo said.

Teffo was reacting to Motsoaledi’s call for a complete overhaul of the country’s immigration set-up to establish a new all-encompassing immigration policy.

The current approach made SA the only country in Africa that the migrant problem is ‘of ANC’s own making’ immigration overhaul lowed illegal foreign migrants in while the rest of the continent, including neighbouring countries, were very strict on the issue.

Many countries adopted or signed the 1951 United Nations Refugees Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the status of refugees and also made reservations and exceptions pertaining to certain circumstances on immigrants as the law permitted.

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But South Africa, in 1994, did not make those reservations and exceptions. Motsoaledi believed this was a fatal mistake, which he now had to correct.

Many illegal immigrants were neither refugees nor asylum seekers, but economic migrants looking for jobs.

This had caused resentment among locals as some employers opted for foreigners who were cheap labour.

Many illegal migrants also utilised the country’s public service system such as schooling, public health care and housing.

Motsoaledi took the matter to the party’s national policy conference in July last year and a resolution was finally taken at the Nasrec ANC conference in December 2022.

Motsoaledi’s White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection: Towards A Complete Overhaul of the Migration System in South Africa was approved by Cabinet this month.

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