SA citizens’ increasingly hostile response to migration risks damaging relations with the country’s neighbours and undermining the regional solidarity that helped defeat apartheid, a symposium in Makhanda has been told.
Panellists at the multinational conference marking the legacy of former Mozambican president and liberation struggle hero Samora Machel warned that anti-illegal migration marches and calls to expel foreign nationals were creating divisions among countries with a shared history of struggle against colonialism and apartheid.
More than 100 delegates at the conference, held on Monday at Rhodes University’s Alumni House, heard that the migration debate could not be separated from the broader economic and political relationship between Southern African countries.
Former anti-apartheid activist Mavuso Msimang said South Africans needed to be careful not to adopt uninformed positions on migration, warning that the country risked losing sight of the values that had shaped its liberation movement.
Msimang said it was particularly concerning that the ANC, which benefited from solidarity and assistance from other African countries during the apartheid struggle, was now governing a country where citizens were turning against people from those same countries.
“The ANC more than anyone in our country benefited from the countries whose people we are hounding out now,” Msimang said.
He rejected the argument that removing foreign nationals would automatically reduce unemployment in SA, saying research showed that migrant entrepreneurs could create employment.
“And they [immigrants] have nothing to do with [unemployment in] our country.
“If you were able to remove all of them, our unemployment levels will continue to stagnate, possibly even go up, because research has shown that for every entrepreneur who comes in, they create two jobs.
“So, we need to be careful, because perhaps we could be losing our way,” Msimang said.
Migration remains a major issue on the regional agenda.
President Cyril Ramaphosa met Southern African Development Community (Sadc) heads of state in Durban on Monday to discuss how the phenomena should be managed.
Machel’s son, Samora Machel Junior, said SA’s approach to migration was failing to address the underlying reasons why people crossed borders.
Machel said attempts to stop migration through marches and the expulsion of foreign nationals were misguided because people would continue to move when conditions in their home countries became difficult.
“I looked at it as consequences of not a good management in all the countries.
“When you have problems in your country, people will go out to another country to find better opportunities,” Machel said.
Southern African countries needed to work together to address the conditions driving migration.
“The [question] is how we, as Southern African countries, resolve that.
“It is not through March and March, it is not through expelling [foreign nationals].
“After you [foreigners] are gone then I [as a South African] will start looking at a Zulu person and saying this is my region, this is a Xhosa region so the Zulu must be kicked out.
“So, you will destroy yourself,” he said.
Machel said SA citizens should remember that South Africans had fled apartheid and found refuge in other African countries.
“When the people in South Africa fled from the apartheid regime they were welcomed, and some of them started working — they were not [considered to be] taking jobs from the locals there.
“We need to understand that there is a problem and that it needs to be fixed,” he said.
Former EFF parliamentarian Mbuyiseni Ndlozi also called for greater unity among Southern African countries, saying the interconnectedness of the region was essential to its future prosperity.
The panellists argued that responsibility for managing migration could not rest with SA alone, but required Sadc countries to work together to create economic conditions that reduced the pressure on people to leave their home countries.
The symposium was organised in honour of Samora Machel and brought together South African academics, intellectuals and former liberation activists as well as delegates from across Southern Africa.
It examined the continuing links between countries that shared the experience of colonialism and apartheid and questioned whether the region had fulfilled the ambitions of its liberation movements.
The discussions also raised concerns about what panellists described as a growing loss of ubuntu and Pan-African solidarity as migration increasingly becoming a source of tension between SA and its neighbours.
The conference provided a platform for delegates to discuss how regional relationships could be strengthened at a time when migration remained one of the most contentious issues.
Daily Dispatch
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