SA borders are social time bomb

Ironically, the abject failure of the government to properly police South Africa’s borders is not so much a case of the chickens coming home to roost, but of a whole flock of outsider chickens making this country their new roost. The parliamentary portfolio committee of home affairs said this week it wanted to tighten its oversight of the work of the department, focusing particularly on immigration.

Committee chairperson Bongani Bongo wants the current laws rigidly applied – especially when it comes to documentation of all people in the country.

To use another farmyard metaphor, though, that horse bolted years ago. South Africa doesn’t have porous borders as much as very little borders – in the traditional sense – at all.

After 1994, the ANC allowed border control, effectively, to collapse, confident that South Africa could accommodate all those who saw this country as a potential home. It also did not want to offend those African countries who had afforded its cadres shelter during the liberation struggle by making it difficult for citizens of those countries to get into this country.

The reality is that the vast majority of the millions who have flocked here in the past 25 years are economic migrants and are in search of a better life, not fleeing in fear for their safety.

At the same time, millions of South Africans, too, want a better life – and you cannot blame them for being angry about the uncontrolled influx of foreigners who, they believe, are competition for jobs, as well as government resources in health and education.

Sadly, any critics of the situation have been cowed into silence for fear of being labelled xenophobic.

This subject is too serious to be allowed to be wrapped in the cotton wool of political correctness.

We have to acknowledge that we are sitting on a social time bomb.