21st May 2008

“The present tragedy of xenophobia is compounded by the fact that it was predictable, and indeed predicted, for more than ten years,” said the IFP President, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. 
 

AN EARLY PREDICTION 

As the then Minister of Home Affairs, Prince Buthelezi established a process of policy formulation which saw domestic and international experts agreeing on the need for an open but controlled immigration policy for South Africa. The policy and legislation adopted allowed for law enforcement at community level to ensure that declared illegal immigrants could be dealt with as such.  

“As regrettable as it may be, I predicted that when the State becomes absent and abdicates its duties and responsibilities, people see fit to take the law into their own hands, often for their own criminal purposes,” said the Prince.  

In spite of receiving wide international support, this practical immigration policy was systematically frustrated and boycotted while Prince Buthelezi was Minister, and was abandoned after he left. A series of Directors-General seemed specifically appointed to thwart the implementation of policies that could address the problems.  

“My legislation became the most difficult to pass bill in the history of the new Republic,” said the Prince.
 

 THE PROBLEM COMPOUNDED 

Similarly, his repeated request for political support to reform the obsolete refugee system was ignored. Now the refugee system, which remains under-funded because of the dictates of the ruling Party, frustrates any rational efforts to control immigration. Anyone failing to qualify for an immigration permit can just apply for refugee status. They automatically get an asylum seeker’s permit, which the State has no capacity to see through to the necessary and final hearings. In the end, asylum seekers are allowed to stay in the country for years, even though they would not qualify for an immigration permit.  
 

POROUS BORDERS 

Proposals for an Immigration Service which would exercise border control were also ignored, to the point of defying the prescripts of the law, in spite of the Prince’s numerous requests to his D-G and his calls to Parliament and the President to intervene.  

The end result is that South Africa’s borders are wide open. Anyone choosing not to respect our immigration laws can just walk in illegally.  
 

CLOSED FOR BUSINESS 

On the other hand, everything Prince Buthelezi did to facilitate the entry of skilled people and legal immigration has been reversed. Just like in the old South Africa, we now have an immigration system which is inimical to business and beneficial immigration.  

The Prince said, “The system frustrates those who wish to comply with its provisions while remaining impotent in respect of those who wish to defy it.”   
 

GETTING TO THE ROOT 

The root cause of the horrendous campaign of xenophobia we are now seeing is the failure of the State to exercise its legal and moral responsibilities.  

“South Africans are not mean spirited,” said the Prince, “They are generous even when they have little or nothing to share. But their chief misfortune is to have a less than competent Government which has made enormous mistakes and stubbornly stuck by them, especially in the fields of immigration control and the fight against crime.”  

The IFP seeks a just, prosperous and moral society. In pursuit of this vision, South Africa must now go beyond the ritual of condemning xenophobia, to point to the responsibilities of those who must be blamed for its foreseeable and foreseen occurrence.