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It's Not Just In Aleppo

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There is a great irony in the government saying “we appreciate the contribution of immigrants in our country”. This is the same one which refused to acknowledge Zimbabweans fleeing from a dictatorship as refugees, refused to process thousands of these ‘illegal’ migrants and now wants to refuse Zimbabweans permanent residence rights. There is estimated to be between two to three million Zimbabweans living, working and studying in South Africa. While some are able to navigate the country’s intense visa program and immigration standards, many who do not qualify as refugees claim asylum and are then able to work and study in South Africa. What the newly proposed immigration policy seeks to do is terminate the Zimbabwean Special Permit (ZSP), annul their right to work and study and instead intern these people in camps on the border.

If Home Affairs cannot deal with the multitude of applications for refugee status, how is placing camps across a 5224 kilometre border going to work? There would need to be hundreds before even a quarter of the border is covered. It’s simply not going to work. We’ve all seen the holes in the fence and heard stories of R600 getting you through the border without a passport. How would camps even begin to stem the flow of the illegal border jumping? It’s simply not going to work. Another important question is where exactly would this money come from for the hundreds of internment camps? The government would need to provide housing, electricity, food, water and clothing to the migrants in addition to building administrative buildings, fencing, etc. In Australia, it costs R4 10 1708.03 a year to keep one asylum seeker in off-shore detention. If all three million of the Zimbabweans living in South Africa were forced to go through these processing camps - all as Msimang suggests that all Zimbabweans are economic migrants and thus, according to the proposal, should be processed in this new fashion – it would cost around R1230 512 409 000 000. That is twelve thousand and thirty trillion Rand. Unless the government is willing to open the secret vault of money hidden under President Zuma’s desk, the one used to pay for Saxonworld and the Nkandla security upgrades, it’s simply not going to work.

There is no doubt that Zimbabweans fill vital gaps in our skilled and unskilled labour markets. 60% of the foreign qualifications evaluations taken at the South African Qualifications Authority are for Zimbabwean work permit applications. Many engineers and teachers leave Zimbabwe to work in South Africa but are faced with an incredibly complex and time consuming process to get their degrees recognised in order to work. Hence, many people apply for the Zimbabwean Special Dispensation permits instead so that they can work and contribute to the South African economy. This permit acts as a loophole for those who want to restart their lives in South Africa legally and without the delay Home Affairs always promises to fix but doesn’t. It also acts as a safeguard for those who didn’t have time to grab the necessary papers for visas because they were fleeing a violent regime in the middle of the night.

Flash forward to January 1, 2018. Hundreds of thousands are left without papers. The ZSP permits have expired and people are faced with the choice of going back to the tyrannical starving regime they fled to apply for work and study visas or remaining illegally in South Africa. It is not surprising that many people would choose the latter option. What would this mean for the South African economy? Skilled workers like doctors, lawyers and teachers would have to go back to Zimbabwe to reapply for permits, leaving large gaps in our skill sector that South Africans aren’t able to fill. Many unskilled South Africans would lose their jobs as Zimbabweans work illegally for a much cheaper rate. Exploitation and violence would increase rise as Zimbabweans become easy targets for slave labour, sexual assault and crime as they are too scared to report crime out of fear of being deported. Without permits, Zimbabweans would be forced to do low-paying, unskilled jobs regardless of their degree to support their family. Not only are you now putting the South Africans whose jobs are lost at risk of poverty but now also Zimbabweans denied a living wage.

This is simply not going to work, Gigaba. Years of maladministration, denial of the Zimbabwean refugee crisis and temporary solutions have come to a boiling point. You have two choices: either allow those with the ZSP to become citizens if they so wish at the risk of angering Mugabe or send hundreds of thousands of skilled labourers back to a regime waiting to take revenge. The chickens have come home to roost and you, Mr Gigaba, are no farmer.