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Hasn’t this been left a bit late?
We could have dealt with it better, but I don’t think we completely left it too late. The review for the white paper on immigration started in the sixth administration. The establishment of the Border Management Authority also showed that the government acknowledged that there is a weakness which needs to be addressed.
In spite of this you allowed immigration to become a major crisis, didn’t you?
It’s a global issue.
Was it a mistake to allow vigilante groups like March and March to set the agenda?
It is wrong to allow groups to do vigilante work because our law doesn’t allow it. But my understanding is that March and March has been registered as an NGO, and therefore it’s not wrong for them to advocate for an issue. What became a problem was when they gave themselves the authority of law enforcement.
Will you act against police who facilitated this?
We’ve asked the police to deal with those police officers.
To what extent did their June 30 threat force you to focus on the immigration issue like never before?
The issue became an issue not only because of June 30. Marches before that were becoming a concern to government. They were growing in numbers. But all communities were raising this as a concern, not only this organisation, and therefore we listened. But June 30 was a concern for us, I’m not going to lie. We’ve seen how businesses were destroyed before.
Isn’t this why you should have taken the issue of immigration much more seriously much earlier?
We can differ about how the government responded. But you have to find a way of balancing issues of migration and illegal migrants with human rights and responding to what citizens are saying in a way that is within the law.
Would you agree it became a human rights disaster because you responded so late?
It was not a human rights disaster or crisis. It didn’t even come close to that. We actually made sure that it doesn’t. Even the foreign nationals, we were able to protect and provide support for them. Even international bodies have commended us.
Amnesty International called the government out for human rights violations, didn’t they?
No, that’s not true; that’s completely not true. We had all those bodies which commended South Africa for going over and above what the treaties and the law demand. If you look at their report, they commended us.
The South African Human Rights Commission said conditions at the Musina repatriation centre were a serious violation of human rights.
The Human Rights Commission has not been to Musina.
Why was the government so slack about border control for so long?
It wasn’t slack. When minister [Patricia] De Lille was minister of public works, there was a commission of the border line ...
Didn’t she put up a border fence that was totally useless?
We are redoing that process. You’ve got border control, which is under the Border Management Authority ...
Why is it so underresourced?
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