ANC’s border plan makes SA look pathetic and doesn’t solve the issue

Women are still being beaten up in South Africa. This is not happening because we don’t have laws that say it’s wrong and punish those who do it. Women continue to get beaten up because those tasked with upholding the laws don’t do a proper job.

It’s not like we don’t have laws preventing corruption, drug and human trafficking, or even promoting human rights. Those problems persist because the laws tend to be ignored.

So now we can all take a moment to laugh at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan to bolster the border points of entry with Zimbabwe. What for? Is this a confession that the posts weren’t manned before? Does it show that the people tasked with reading passport information were illiterate? Why are we bolstering something that should be working without admitting that it’s not working?

More importantly, what of the other 224km of the Zimbabwe border where there are no official points of entry? Are we just thinking that any illegals coming through are just walking through the door and passing the person who is supposed to stamp a non-existent passport?

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The border gates exist and I’d like to believe that they were doing their job to some extent, but bolstering them does not do much to solve the illegal immigration problem. You’re installing a steal door where there used to be a wooden one flanked by broken barbed wire. You’re putting focus on a few entry points and diverting attention away from what happens after entry.

It makes no sense to bolster a border entry point when you don’t even have the legal knowledge to make a decision on ZEP (Zimbabwe Exemption Permit) permits that won’t lead to the courts ruling against them.

The problem clearly isn’t the crossing at the official point of entry, so why are we trying to fix it there?

From a policy perspective, it may seem like you’re doing something to deal with the problem in much the same way as one may drink to forget about their alcoholism. The solution just doesn’t arrive from the plan so don’t be expecting any more security from this.

The ANC put out a statement implying that there’s a lot of contraband coming across the border and this will solve the issue. The statement doesn’t provide much promise. All it shows is that we’re aware of the problem but won’t admit it publicly … instead we’ll do things that won’t end the problem and claim that they will.

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There’s all this nuance that we just have to accept or ignore. Note how this energy of securing the border isn’t being applied to any of our other neighbours. But we can’t say anything about that because that would be xenophobic. Of course, we can pretend like we’re doing everything we can to keep the illegals out but we can’t exactly say it lest we get called intolerant. So, somehow policy makers have to walk some awkward line of getting things done but still looking like they’re not bad people.

Only this both makes us look pathetic and doesn’t even resolve the issue.

So, thanks government peeps for giving up some time to hang out in northern Limpopo and talk about some border problems. I’m glad you’re trying to come up with solutions and it would be lovely if the solutions actually worked.

So instead of telling us that you’re bolstering the border, it would be cool if you told us why you want to do it and what your aims are so we can hold you to account. Just sucks that you can’t outright say that we want fewer foreign nationals from a particular country because we think they bring in too many drugs.

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