SA’s immigration conundrum is not at the border; it is at the Union Buildings

Every few months, South Africa undergoes a similar ritual.

A clinic is overwhelmed in Hillbrow. A township business is looted. A truck is burnt on the N3. A mother in Limpopo gives birth on the floor because the maternity ward is full. And immediately, we point at the foreigner.

Then politicians arrive with loudhailers. One party promises to close the border. Another promises to give everyone documents. Another promises to deport 12 million people in 12 months – a logistical impossibility that would require a fleet of planes we don’t have.

And after the march, after the speech, nothing changes. The border remains porous, Home Affairs remains broken and the poor – both South African and foreign – continue to fight over crumbs at the margins of the mainstream economy.

The immigration challenge in South Africa is real. But what it demonstrates above all is a massive, sustained failure of political leadership.

1. We have confused control with cruelty

South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It promises rights to “everyone”, not just citizens. We signed the UN Refugee Convention. We are a member of the African Union, which preaches Pan-Africanism.

But we have a Home Affairs system that is deliberately dysfunctional.

Try to obtain asylum in South Africa today. You will queue from 3am at the Desmond Tutu Refugee Reception Office in Marabastad. You will be told the system is offline. You will be issued a Section 22 permit that expires after six months, requiring you to return again and again.

Employers do not recognise it. Banks do not recognise it. Police tear it up at roadblocks and ask for a bribe.

The result is predictable: People who should be documented become undocumented because the state makes it impossible to stay documented. Then the state calls them “illegal” and raids them.

This is not border control. This is manufactured illegality. And it serves a purpose: It creates a pool of cheap, exploitable labour that can be blamed when things go wrong.

Political leadership has failed to fix Home Affairs because a broken Home Affairs is politically useful.

2. We don’t tell the truth about the economy

The uncomfortable truth politicians won’t say on a podium is this: South Africa’s economy needs migrants and has needed them for 150 years.

Our mines were built on Mozambican, Basotho and Malawian labour. Our farms in Limpopo and the De Doorns valley run on Zimbabwean labour. Our hospitals in rural Eastern Cape are staffed by Cuban and Nigerian doctors because South African doctors won’t go there. Our restaurants in Cape Town and Sandton rely on Malawian waiters. Many township spaza shops are sustained by Ethiopian and Somali entrepreneurs who wake up at 4am, extend credit to customers, and sell in small units where large retailers often do not.

Numerous studies, including by the World Bank and UCT, show that migrants are net contributors to GDP, not job takers. They create jobs. They pay VAT. They don’t qualify for R350 SRD grants.

But instead of building a managed labour migration system – like Canada’s points system or a proper SADC work visa regime – we have left it to smugglers. We have a 3,000km border with Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini, fenced so poorly that some holes are wide enough to drive a taxi through. The Border Management Authority has 2,600 staff for the entire border and a vacancy rate of 75%. We spend more on VIP protection for politicians than on border technology.

That is not the failure of the immigrant who crosses at Beitbridge. That is the failure of the state that knew for 30 years the fence was broken and did nothing.

3. We have outsourced governance to mob rule

The most dangerous failure is this: When the state fails to provide housing, jobs and healthcare, it allows communities to turn on each other instead of turning on the state.

In 2008, 62 foreign nationals were killed in xenophobic attacks. In 2015, seven were killed. In 2019, numerous shops were looted again. In 2021, we watched Operation Dudula rise. In every case, political leaders either quietly fanned the flames or arrived late with condemnation.

No mayor has ever lost their job because a clinic ran out of medicine. But a foreign shopkeeper can lose their life for the same reason.

This is classic scapegoating. And it works because our leaders have never implemented a coherent integration plan: Where are the community dialogues between local business forums and foreign trader associations? Where is the by-law that allows a South African and an Ethiopian to trade legally without paying a bribe to a councillor? Where is the plan to document spaza shops instead of burning them?

Rwanda, with a genocide in its history, has integrated refugees. Kenya hosts 700,000 refugees in Kakuma. South Africa, with one of the continent's most advanced economies, cannot effectively manage 300,000 asylum seekers because it has chosen not to prioritise doing so.

What would leadership look like?

It would not be open borders. No serious country has open borders. And it would not be mass deportation, which is both immoral and impossible.

Leadership would look like four honest things:

1. Fix Home Affairs first. Digitise the asylum process, issue five-year permits that employers can verify and clear the backlog of 300,000 appeals that has accumulated since 2012. Corrupt officials who sell passports must be imprisoned, not just transferred.

2. Introduce a real SADC work visa. Let a Zimbabwean teacher come legally for three years to teach mathematics in Lusikisiki, pay tax and then go home – instead of paying R5,000 to a smuggler and living in fear. Remittances already prop up the region; let us formalise the system.

3. Enforce labour law for everyone. If a farmer pays a Zimbabwean R150 a day below minimum wage, jail the farmer, not just deport the worker. Exploitation thrives because enforcement is selective.

4. Stop using foreigners as a distraction. Every time a politician says “foreigners are taking jobs” without showing us their plan for jobs, youth unemployment and the energy crisis, he is telling you he has no plan.

The conundrum is not that people move. People have always moved. The conundrum is that in 30 years of democracy, we have not built a state capable of managing movement with dignity, legality and common sense.

The border is not the problem. The Union Buildings are. DM