By Akani Nkuna
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula says South Africa continues to grapple with illegal immigration but rejected claims that the ANC-led government has failed to act, saying border security interventions have been implemented over the past two decades.
Speaking at a media briefing at Chief Albert Luthuli House in Johannesburg on Thursday, Mbalula said illegal immigration had become a burden for South Africa.
He was giving the ANC’s assessment of recent domestic and international developments, including Tuesday’s anti-illegal immigration protests held across the country.
“We must address the truth and the facts, that illegal immigration has become a burden for South Africa. A lie is circulating in our politics that the ANC government has done nothing about undocumented immigrants,” said Mbalula.
“Our continent carries the largest stock of intra-African migration in the world relative to its population, approximately 40.5 million African migrants, some 21 million of whom remain on the continent, and around 35 million displaced persons of concern.”
He added: “South Africa itself, on the 2022 Census, is home to some 3.95 million foreign-born residents, 6.5 per cent of our people, with all the pressure that places upon our clinics, our schools and our services. It is for this reason that the Office of the Secretary General has prepared a Continental Compact on Migration in Africa, and the ANC urges our deployees in government to take it up and to place it before the African Union as the foundation for a lasting African answer.”
Mbalula said government had faced legal challenges, including court action by some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in its efforts to enforce immigration laws and strengthen border controls.
“Here is the part the opportunists never tell you. Time and again, when this government has moved to enforce immigration law, it has been dragged to court, not to make it deport, but to stop it. When the government moved to end the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit dispensation, the Helen Suzman Foundation took the Minister of Home Affairs to court, and in June 2023 the High Court in Pretoria set that decision aside as unlawful, shielding some 178,000 Zimbabwean permit-holders from removal, a ruling the government then lost on appeal,” Mbalula told reporters.
“The Scalabrini Centre, Lawyers for Human Rights and others have, over many years, repeatedly and successfully approached our courts to constrain removals and to protect the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers. This is the truth the slogan hides: the ANC government has often been doing so much on immigration that the courts themselves have had to rein it in. You cannot, in the same breath, sue the government for deporting and then accuse it of doing nothing.”
Mbalula said accusations that the ANC-led government had ignored the issue were not true. He also accused organisers of the 30 June anti-illegal immigration protests of initially advocating violence and anarchy through calls for a national shutdown.
“The shutdown from its very beginning, in terms of its announcement, was meant to render South Africa ungovernable, and government has acted within the parameters of a democratic state,” he said.
Mbalula welcomed the introduction of a parliamentary Bill requiring asylum seekers to seek protection in the first safe country they enter, saying the measure would help curb illegal immigration.
He said the Bill was not intended to shut South Africa’s doors to Africans fleeing genuine persecution but to close loopholes that allowed abuse of the asylum system.
“We agree with South Africans that government should have paid more attention to the question of porous borders. No one leaves their country and sets up businesses illegally in other countries,” Mbalula said.
“There is now a Bill before Parliament that will make the first safe country the proper jurisdiction in which to seek asylum, so that a person fleeing genuine persecution claims protection at the first safe border they reach, and not after crossing a dozen peaceful countries to arrive at ours.”
He added: “When the ANC brought the Border Management Authority to Parliament, the very agency that today hardens our borders, it was opposed by the Democratic Alliance and delayed by others in that House. It is an easy thing to shout about borders on a march. It is another thing entirely to vote to secure them. The ANC did the work; others stood in the way, and now pretend otherwise. And we are not standing still.”
Despite some protests descending into violence, looting and incidents in which civilians demanded identity documents from suspected illegal immigrants, Mbalula said many participants were expressing genuine concerns about illegal immigration.
“There’s no violence, anarchy and disruption of the economy that is going to solve the challenge of illegal immigration. Government is acting now and has been acting. Local government must act and we don’t need summits but action when it comes to illegal immigration. We thank the security forces for ensuring that violence was limited,” said Mbalula.
“We will always enforce the law, firmly, humanely and without fear. We will never surrender our streets to the mob, nor our conscience to the demagogue. And we will keep our eyes fixed on the future our people deserve.”
INSIDE POLITICS
