Honourable Speaker 

The appalling events in our country over the past few weeks have shocked and ashamed not only all peace-loving and law-abiding South Africans but the world at large. While we all sympathise with the hardships and trying economic times many of our people are enduring currently, the brutal violence that accompanied the outburst of popular frustration with the ever increasing numbers of foreign nationals in our country is unacceptable and unbecoming the people who only recently overcame apartheid. 

On the one hand, the crisis has presented us with the opportunity to show that we are a caring and compassionate nation. Despite the initial lack of sympathetic co-operation from the government agencies, independent aid workers, most of them attached to churches and private charities, have been able to provide shelters with at least two meals a day in various locations across Gauteng for most of the displaced foreigners, often from ad-hoc donations from our public. These individuals have worked very hard to restore the faith in South Africans in those injured and dislodged in the xenophobic attacks. 

On the other hand, the crisis has encouraged a number of opportunistic politicians to point fingers in all directions, except at themselves.

Last week here in KwaZulu Natal we heard an extraordinary statement from the MEC for Community Safety and Liaison who accused the IFP of fomenting xenophobic violence in Durban, only to retract these baseless accusations later amid much derision. The official government line now is that the attacks have been fuelled by unspecified criminal elements.

Whether this is the entire picture is a matter for a high-profile commission of inquiry.

The xenophobic attacks have raised broader questions about how South Africa should handle immigration in the future. South African mines and farms have long employed workers from Lesotho, Malawi or Zimbabwe.

Thousands of refugees from the war in Mozambique arrived in the 1980s.

But the flow has swelled since the 1990s when apartheid ended and South Africa opened up to the world. Thanks to Zimbabwe's chaos, hundreds of thousands, probably several million, have fled the misery and repression north of the Limpopo river. Many people from all over Africa and as far as Pakistan and China have also been given refuge.

By far the largest number of refugees hails from Zimbabwe where our President memorably keeps telling us there is no crisis. Has the ANC forgotten its own anti-apartheid slogan of 'an injury to one is an injury to all'? By refusing to recognise the slow political and economic disintegration in Zimbabwe, the South African government has boosted the numbers of genuine political refugees as well as economic migrants from that unhappy country. Their presence in our townships and in our tight labour-market as mostly unskilled workers has created social and economic pressures which the masses of poor South Africans found themselves no longer able to tolerate.

There is an element of truth on all sides in this sad saga. Yes, foreign nationals residing in South Africa are making a tangible contribution to the national economy, even if their contribution is largely restricted to the informal sector. And yes, foreign nationals are also responsible for much of the crime, both blue- and white-collar, that continues to plague our cities and townships. As much as we cannot overlook the thousands of hard-working foreign labourers and hawkers, we cannot ignore the ubiquitous foreign drug lords and reckless human traffickers.

Honourable Speaker, the South African government has yet to take immigration seriously. Its priority so far has been to deport the few illegals that get caught crossing our long, porous and badly policed borders. This has also led to many human-rights abuses: foreigners say that the police often harass them and extort bribes and they are often right. Calls have grown louder for a new policy to legalise foreigners' status and welcome their badly-needed skills. Paradoxically, the most comprehensive attempt to streamline immigration in line with international best practice was famously scrapped by the national cabinet in 2004.

I am talking about the Immigration Act, sponsored by the then Minister of Home Affairs Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, which placed focus on skilled foreigners at the expense of unskilled workers. The law was never implemented and, as a result, the opposite of its objectives has materialised. While South Africa continues to lack specialised skills, dozens of unskilled workers are queuing for every casual job on our highly inflexible labour market. Our response to the xenophobic attacks must therefore be as complex as their composite causes require.

The IFP continues to advocate controlled immigration, focused on skills and free of off-putting bureaucracy. At the same time, we continue to uphold the values enshrined in our constitution which generously relegates South Africa to all who live in it. 

I thank you.

Contact: Dr Lionel Mtshali, 083 256 4902