SA ‘misses point on migration’

RESEARCH: 350 FOREIGN PEOPLE KILLED IN SA

Experts say demonising foreigners further will not stop the attacks.

Government is clearly not getting the point of how to tackle the issues of migration and violence against foreigners in South Africa. The result is the killing of 350 foreign people so far on South African soil by locals, according to statistics from the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at Wits University in Johannesburg.

And that number could increase if the real issues were not dealt with, the centre warned.

Parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs suggested on Wednesday a “thorough look at the current migration policy of the country is necessary to ensure it is responsive to current trends”.

“The committee took this resolution after a briefing by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), Wits’ ACMS and the home affairs department.

“We must be mindful that while we relook at the migration policy with the aim of ensuring it is responsive to current challenges, we also remain conscious that the department is in the security cluster and therefore has a security role to play.

“Thus this process requires the balancing of both facets,” chairperson Lemias Mashile said.

However, Professor Loren Landau, research chair in Mobility and the Politics of Difference at the ACMS, said: “It is a way forward but it is not a positive one.

“The government is responding to the biases of its officials and the political demands of its most vocal and violent constituents.

“So while securitisation [sic] makes political sense for leaders low on popular legitimacy, it ignores the long-term consequences for regional development, human rights, and social cohesion.

“While South Africa has chosen this path, it should be wary of the consequences, illustrations of which we see in rising death tolls and organised crime along the US-Mexico and Euro-African borders.

“In these instances, the main consequence of securitisation is decreased security.”

A response to the demonisation

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7. of foreigners that demonises them further would do nothing to prevent further violence, Landau added.

ACMS Professor Ingrid Palmary said South Africa should look more at internal migration and urbanisation as this was where challenges were most rife, according to the parliamentary statement.

This phenomenon has largely been ignored in policy and planning, she said.