SA Migration International

News Articles

Wholesale review of immigration regimen may see SA (temporarily) exit UN convention on refugees

Source: Daily Maverick, 21/08/2023

South Africa could drop out from the United Nations refugee convention, while also repealing its domestic refugee, immigration and citizenship laws in efforts to ‘reshape the destiny of our country’, according to an ANC WhatsApp group message making the rounds from Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s WhatsApp message asks for readiness to publicly comment on the release of the almost completed White Paper, or a government policy statement, that has emerged rather than the single new immigration law the governing ANC 2022 national conference had resolved on.
Going the White Paper route takes Home Affairs back to 2017, and its never implemented international migration policy.
Make sense of the climate crisis
The ANC 2022 national conference resolved that the government “must review” the 1996 accession without reservations to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the related 1967 protocol. But the ministerial text message on the White Paper sketches a different take �` withdrawal from the UN agreements because South Africa joined without any reservations, the jargon for qualifications that allow a state to deviate from a specific convention provision.
“All countries of the world ratified with reservations in the interests of their citizens. We will re-enter the conventions afresh with reservations,” messaged Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, also announcing the White Paper’s proposed repeal of the immigration, citizenship and refugee acts.
“Once Cabinet gives the white paper a go-ahead, we will release it for public comment. It will be your time cdes [comrades] to reshape the destiny of our country.”
Strictly speaking, Motsoaledi’s claims on the UN refugee convention are not quite accurate.
To date, 149 state parties have signed up, many without any reservations, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. A broad-sweep overview shows most often reservations are on refugees’ work permit exemptions and the right to limit refugees’ freedom of movement and residence, effectively opening the door to encampment, which is not South Africa’s domestic policy.
If South Africa decides to withdraw from the UN refugee convention and protocol, it’s not effective until a year later. Mentioned nowhere is withdrawing from the African Union’s Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa that embeds many of the UN refugee protection measures.
The Home Affairs ministry was asked for detailed comment, including on the White Paper publication date, the impact of withdrawing from the international convention on South Africa’s global obligations and concerns that the proposed withdrawal alongside a new immigration and citizenship regimen could fan anti-foreigner sentiments.
“When the department releases the White Paper for public comment, after Cabinet approval, it will also issue an official statement that will answer your questions,” was the official response. It came some 24 hours after the initial 48-hour period for comment.
Also approached for comment, the ANC did not respond over several days.
South Africa’s proposed policy and legislative changes on the migration front come amid persistent anti-foreign sentiments, often fanned by vigilante groupings like Operation Dudula.
Xenophobic violence outbreaks
Civil society groups repeatedly raised the alarm �` in 2008, 62 people were killed in the worst outbreak of violence against foreign nationals �` as did the UN amid the July 2022 violence. Sharp criticism followed Motsoaledi’s 2018 comments, while he was health minister, that foreign nationals overburdened public health.
Such sentiments re-emerged at the ANC 2022 conference in a resolution that the government must ensure the “problem” of migration in the health sector was “completely resolved by 31 December 2023 through the work of relevant government departments and in collaboration with multilateral bodies responsible for the welfare of refugees and migrants”.
It’s unclear why Home Affairs went the route of a White Paper, or policy statement, rather than straight away producing draft legislation to bring immigration, migration, citizenship and refugee matters into a single law.
That would be in line with the 2022 ANC national conference resolution, stating that the government needed to “completely overhaul” existing citizenship, refugee and immigration legislation to “introduce a single legislation…”, while abolishing the acquiring of citizenship by marriage and introducing “quotas on the employment of foreign nationals”.
These employment quotas “should go a long way in defusing the violence between South African citizens and foreign workforce”, the resolution says. But this is disingenuous as the existing Immigration Act stipulates that the government must ensure “the contribution of foreigners in the South African labour market does not adversely impact on existing labour standards and the rights and expectations of South African workers”.
It’s up to the government, broadly speaking, and Home Affairs specifically, to ensure laws are implemented properly, effectively and consistently.
The government’s current move to a single refugee, immigration and citizenship law was signalled by Motsoaledi in his Budget Vote speech on 17 May 2023.
“The three pieces of legislation namely, the Immigration Act of 2002, the South African Citizenship Act of 1995 and the Refugees Act of 1998 are obsolete and would be completely repealed … A new single legislation dealing with immigration, citizenship and refugee protection will be introduced as is now the international trend…
“The current practice of migrants challenging the unfavourable decisions in long-drawn court process[es] would be discouraged,” Motsoaledi said then.
The immigration White Paper proposals are set to play out on the campaign trail for the 2024 elections that pundits have styled as the most crucial since South Africa’s 1994 transition to democracy

Search

Latest News

North Korean hackers have been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus to plant backdoors on big corporate networks and deliver cryptocurrency miners through GuptiMiner malware. Researchers describe GuptiMiner as `a highly sophisticated threat` that can perform DNS requests to the attacker`s DNS servers, extract payloads from images, sign its payloads, and perform DLL sideloading. Delivering GuptiMiner via eScan updates In a report released today, cybersecurity company Avast says that the threat actor behind GuptiMiner had an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) position to hijack the normal virus definition update package and replace it with a malicious one named ‘updll62.dlz.’... Read more...

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19... Read more...

DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications.... Read more...

Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before.... Read more...

Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17... Read more...

In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin.... Read more...

The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. The lost hours are largely due to system downtime, surpassing load-shedding. In the 2022/2023 financial year, where we experienced extensive load-shedding, system downtime was the cause of 41 691 hours lost (17 years), whereas load-shedding caused around 9 322 hours lost (4 years) at DHA civic offices on the production of smart IDs.... Read more...

JOHANNESBURG - Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that while the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection had been gazetted, there were amendments that needed to be made to the legislation before it could be passed into law. The White Paper is proposing an overhaul of the country`s migration laws, with the aim of tightening rules around allowing migrants into the country.... Read more...

Highly skilled professionals are leaving South Africa to move to other countries, while the local economy faces a skills shortage. Data from The Outlier revealed that there were just over 900,000 South Africans living abroad in 2020. This number has increased steadily over the past 20 years, from 500,000 in 2000, according to Stats SA’s Migration Profile Report for South Africa 2023. Of these 900,000 people, 7 out of 10 are living in either Europe or Oceania. In particular, Australia and New Zealand have seen a large growth in South African residents. In 2020, around 273,000 South Africans were living in those two countries, more than double the 106,000 who lived there in 2000. The UK remains still the top destination for South Africans who leave the country.... Read more...

Document proposes overhauling the Citizenship Act, the Refugees Act and the Immigration Act and a review of the international treaty on refugee protection Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi says the cabinet has approved a white paper overhauling the country’s immigration laws after “robust engagements” that resulted in “wide support” of the document’s policy positions.... Read more...