MIKE SILUMA | The immigration crisis might not go to waste altogether

While hosting his Kenyan counterpart Wiliam Ruto this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa would send envoys “not only on the continent but also around the world” in response to the immigration crisis, which threatens to destabilise the country and severely tarnish its global image.

Given the media exposure it has received, our migration hot potato, sparked by marches against undocumented migrants, was bound to feature prominently in any engagement with an African leader, Ruto being no exception.

Ramaphosa said his government wanted, inter alia, to learn how other countries had dealt with migration problems. He also sought to promote African solidarity and co-operation in addressing continental challenges. While few would quibble with such objectives, some would argue that the answer to our migration headache is less complicated than the president may have made out.

If, for instance, the government had taken more seriously its task of controlling the movement of people across our borders and enforced the relevant laws, would the problem have worsened to its current uncontrollable levels?

If our government had focused on growing our economy and creating jobs, there would be very few people, especially among the youth, having the time to march all day with the singular aim of venting their spleen at fellow Africans — and usurping the authorities’ abandoned role of law enforcement.

And if Ramaphosa’s fellow African leaders had taken the trouble to develop their own economies and create enough jobs for their citizens, would South Africa be contending with a relentless tidal wave of people flocking here in search of a better future?

The protests on our streets, coupled with fake social media images and videos and abetted by the government’s ineffectual communications and feeble leadership, have negatively impacted Brand SA

It is quite rich, by the way, that it is some of these leaders who now adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, even rushing to make South Africa an AU agenda item. Surely it might be more helpful and productive if they put Africa’s development, and by extension that of their own countries, atop the agenda?

Methinks, despite their rulers’ hypocritical bombast and with their economies in the doldrums, Africans from elsewhere on the continent will continue to beat the well-worn path to our shores, looking for a comparatively better life.

In this context, South Africa’s chagrin at Ghana’s decision to table our country’s migration problem at the forthcoming AU summit is understandable. It has threatened, in turn, to introduce an item to discuss the “push and pull factors of migration, including good governance, rule of law and democracy”. In short, the real reasons why people find South Africa a better place to live than their own countries.

That notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that the protests on our streets, coupled with fake social media images and videos and abetted by the government’s ineffectual communications and feeble leadership, have negatively impacted Brand SA.

This is a far cry from the era when post-apartheid South Africa was welcomed by the African continent as a valued, even admired, member of the African community of nations. The continent looked to South Africa, with its greater means, to help solve conflicts from Lesotho to Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. South Africa’s participation in continental peacekeeping ventures came at a high material and human cost, with many of our young people losing their lives in the process.

With its ethos captured in Thabo Mbeki’s “I am an African” speech, South Africa, which today stands accused of xenophobia, did more than its fair share of problem-solving on the continent. To advance what Mbeki named the “African Renaissance”, Pretoria played a leading role in efforts to strengthen governance and development on the continent through structures such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and the African Peer Review Mechanism. More recently, when hosting the G20, Ramaphosa dressed it up at every turn as “Africa’s G20”.

Ironically the incipient negativity towards South Africa in some African capitals may have served to goad Pretoria into reviving the cordial links it once enjoyed with most of the continent

In the heat of the protests and anger at the majority’s grinding poverty, South Africa’s historical links with the continent, when many Africans worked on our mines, for instance, may have been forgotten. Or even that many of the continent’s leaders, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Botswana’s Seretse Khama and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, studied here at Fort Hare University. This is quite apart from Africa’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle.

Ultimately South Africa cannot thrive on the continent or make a meaningful contribution to world affairs in isolation from its African neighbours. As attested to by our decision to join the African Continental Free Trade Area, which aims to boost African economies by promoting trade between them, our country’s economy is inextricably intertwined with that of the rest of the continent.

While someone like US President Donald Trump is bent on stifling our access to his market, Africa, more than any other part of the world, should be our natural, key economic partner, rather than an adversary. In addition to South African companies doing extensive business on the continent, spanning financial services, retail, telecoms and mining, we export much of our agricultural produce to the continent, which speaks to job creation at home.

By failing to effectively deal with the immigration question, South Africa risks squandering the abundance of goodwill it has hitherto enjoyed on the continent.

Ruto’s visit, Ramaphosa’s recent sojourn to Botswana and the decision to increase diplomatic engagement with fellow African countries suggest that not all is lost. The crisis might not, as the saying goes, go to waste altogether. Ironically the incipient negativity towards South Africa in some African capitals may have served to goad Pretoria into reviving the cordial links it once enjoyed with most of the continent.

There is, of course, a view in some quarters that a hidden hand could be fomenting the unrest through funding and other means. If true, it would not come as a surprise, given the enmity South Africa has incurred due to its international relations choices, including taking Israel to the International Court of Justice.

Irrespective, the solution to our crisis ultimately remains in the hands of our own government, elected to defend the republic and advance the interests of its people, and not somewhere else.