As tensions over foreigners reached boiling point this week, home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi accused some foreign nationals of abusing SA's hospitality and immigration laws.
Motsoaledi was speaking a day after he, home affairs officials and the Hawks staged an operation at a home affairs office in Krugersdorp and arrested a foreign national believed to be the kingpin of a syndicate producing fake IDs and passports.
“Of course we are being abused, there is no question about that. The things that are being demanded of us and happening here would never happen anywhere else,” Motsoaledi told the Sunday Times.
“Our undoing as South Africa is that we said we live very well with our neighbours and did not put them in camps. Instead of being praised, we are being thrown with a label of being xenophobic. We don’t put anybody in a camp.”
The minister's comments came amid growing tension between locals and foreigners in some communities, with vigilante groups such as Operation Dudula gaining support.
Yesterday anti-xenophobia activists marched to the Hillbrow and Johannesburg Central police stations to deliver a memorandum asking police to intervene against the rising number of attacks on migrants.
The Johannesburg high court on Friday overturned a ban on the protest imposed by the Johannesburg Metro Police.
One of the organisers, Trevor Ngwane, said during the march yesterday that the group was calling for Motsoaledi's resignation, along with that of Gauteng premier David Makhura, because they had associated themselves with xenophobic statements.
“Motsoaledi's department has failed to do its job in regulating the state of immigrants in SA. Government has failed the working class and the poor. The oppressed and poor must unite now and speak with one voice.”
Government is being opportunistic. It wants to trade with the rest of Africa, but at home it does not act like a good neighbour
— Trevor Ngwane
Ngwane said SA had been built with the help of such nations as Mozambique and Malawi, but it was now turning its back on them.
“Government is being opportunistic. It wants to trade with the rest of Africa, but at home it does not act like a good neighbour, like an African country. Instead it wants to victimise Africans.
“We are asking police to protect immigrants and to stop organisations like Operation Dudula from harassing us. They are inciting violence against women and children just because they are not from SA.”
Motsoaledi, in his interview with the Sunday Times, said that when SA ratified the UN convention on refugees two years after becoming a democracy, it did so without conditions.
“We only ratified it in 1996 but when all the other countries ratified it, they made reservations and exemptions. Here we are, instead of being praised we are falling on our own sword for being nice.”
The minister said the influx of foreigners, documented and undocumented, was a “ticking time bomb”.
Foreigners in KwaZulu-Natal are reportedly living in fear amid reports that Operation Dudula is eying the province as its next target. The movement aims to root out illegal or undocumented migrants, particularly those setting up shops and engaging in crime.
This week the police arrested the movement’s leader, Nhlanhla “Lux” Dlamini, for his alleged role in the ransacking of Soweto resident Victor Ramerafe’s home. Dlamini is expected to apply for bail tomorrow.
“It is a crisis, there is no question about it. It is a crisis with historical roots,” Motsoaledi said.
“During apartheid, the borders were fortified… There were electric fences everywhere, a soldier posted at every inch of the border line and white farmers were given farms and arms to guard the border.”
However in 1994, president Nelson Mandela ordered that the electric fences be removed, he said.
“Unfortunately, things turned very bad. At the time the Refugees Act was enacted [in 1998], only 11,000 people from all over the world came to SA asking for asylum and refugee status. In 2006 the number reached 53,000 and the asylum-seekers system could cope with that because it was designed for that.”
Numbers soared even higher after the global financial crisis of 2008.
“The Zimbabwean economy collapsed and the borders were opened and people just rushed into South Africa in the most unimaginable and uncontrollable way and by the end of that year, there were 207,000 people asking for asylum,” the minister said.
“While the system was still in shock and struggling, in 2009 another 227,000 arrived meaning that within two years we had 400,000 people all asking for asylum, which was not necessarily true. Some of them were economic migrants.”
Like many of his colleagues in the cabinet, Motsoaledi does not think of South Africans as being xenophobic.
“It’s absolutely not xenophobia. The tensions are usually in the townships and rural areas, where people are fighting for scarce resources and survival, so do you expect people to fold their arms?
“No, they feel threatened and they fight and that’s not xenophobia. Xenophobia means you are fighting anyone who is not from your country regardless of their status. That’s not what’s happening in South Africa.”
Asked if he was concerned about how neighbouring countries view the tensions, Motsoaledi said: “I am worried but I know for instance that Nigeria likes pointing a finger that we are xenophobic. We asked them a question and told them that there is a perception that they are drug peddlers. Do you want us to push that label to you? Will you accept it? And we said fine, if we are xenophobic then you are drug peddlers.”
He says South Africans should not be intimidated by countries that accused them of a prejudice against foreigners.
We said fine, if we are xenophobic then you are drug peddlers
— Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi
“That xenophobia label is thrown at you and you are supposed to blink at best, and at worst you are supposed to duck under the table.
"I am not going to blink. I am not going to duck under the table just because you call me xenophobic. This toy gun which is being used against us no longer has an effect on me,” he said.
The minister acknowledged there is no system to trace people who are in the country illegally.
“We are still working on it. That is an admission on my part and it is a serious weakness.”
While it might seem like the government was dragging its feet on the matter, Motsoaledi said, his department was beefing up security along the borders.
In November last year the first commissioner of the Border Management Authority was appointed.
“In December two deputy commissioners came in and they started their work in January. Two weeks ago, it was the closing date for the first group of border guards who will be posted at the border.”
SA has 150,000 officially registered refugees and more than 900,000 asylum-seekers.
Motsoaledi said the government needed to urgently review its immigration laws.
“We need to check whether they are in line with the contemporary ways, or is it the laws that we passed 20 years ago when the situation was completely different.
“I have already announced to parliament that we are going to review the South African Citizenship Act of 1995. The Refugees Act of 1998 and the Immigration Act 2002 are under review because they must meet the contemporary situation that we are facing.”
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