April 2001
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The new parliamentary season in South Africa commenced with a series of claims and counter-claims around the status of the proposed Immigration Bill. In his State of the Nation Address on 9 February 2001, President Mbeki mentioned the immigration issue for the first time and committed his government to (a) the urgent review of immigration laws and procedures to enable the attraction of skills into the country; and (b) pushing back "the frontiers of racism and xenophobia in South Africa." On 12 February 2001, the ANC Deputy-Minister of Home Affairs, Charles Nqakula, in a Media Briefing in Cape Town commented as follows:
The year 2001 will launch a new system of migration control for South Africa, which capitalises on world experience while setting new world standards without losing sight of the specific features of our society and government and related limitations and constraints. The Aliens Control Act, apartheid's last act, will be replaced by the Immigration Act which will not only change the criteria for the issuance of permanent and temporary residence permits, but also the structures intended to administer new procedures. The new legislation establishes regulatory agencies, which will have the flexibility to make detailed determinations on the needs of migration control and our society, in close co-ordination and consultation with the affected interests, role-players and stakeholders. The new system will enable our country to acquire the skill and human resources it needs to grow and prosper.
There is general recognition that at present the delivery of migration control is poor and unsatifactory while consuming vast human and administrative resources, thereby preventing our Department from allocating resources to law enforcement, such as the detection, prevention an deportation of illegal aliens. The Immigration Bill has received wide support throughout civil society in spite of being part of what will always remain a controversial field. We hope and trust that this Bill will pass through the parliamentary process in the current year, given the urgency of the matter.
Once adopted it may take two years to finalise the restructuring of the migration line fuction of the Department and the new immigration service envisaged in the Bill, and to adopt the required regulations through the necessary participation of the relevant stakeholders and role-players. Therefore, the restructuring of the migration control line function of our Department will be roughly on the same time-scale as the restructuring of the civic affairs line functions on the basis of delegation to municipalities. Possibly, many Home Affairs offices will be entirely dedicated to migration control, which is a function which does not need to be equally distributed across the territory and would be less affected by the inequalities inherited from apartheid.
There is little evidence that the Bill enjoys "wide support" in civil society but the Deputy Minister's speech indicates that the ANC finally recognizes the urgency of new immigration legislation (see How Can We Attract Skilled Labour?). Neither Mbeki nor Nqakula made mention of the conflict over process between the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs and the Minister of Home Affairs in late 2000.
A Financial Mail report on 9 March 2001 claimed that Mbeki's promised immigration law revamp had begun. The report asserted that Cabinet's Investment and Empowerment Committee would carry out an audit of South Africa's skills needs. Second, and more controversially, the report claimed that Mbeki's office would take charge of rewriting new immigration legislation which would be tabled in Parliament by February 2002. Third, in the interim, the Director General of Home Affairs would implement interim measures to speed the granting of work and investor permits to foreign citizens.
The IFP, headed by Home Affairs Minister Buthelezi, was outraged by the claim that Mbeki's office would take over the drafting of legislation and threatened to withdraw from government. Buthelezi was apparently assured by the ANC that he would not lose jurisdiction over the process (see Mbeki, Buthelezi on Collision Course). Government spokesman, Joel Netshitenzhe, claimed that the Financial Mail report was "essentially not accurate" (see Mbeki Did Not Sidestep Buthelezi). The claim that Mbeki's office was taking charge was publically rejected by ANC Deputy Home Affairs Minister Nqakula who wrote that this would "make a mockery of five years of open, transparent and laborious policy formulation and negotiations and collegial style of governance" (see Rejecting Insinuations).
The Minister's proposals for an immigration service on the American INS model has been a major source of concern in Cabinet during the past year amongst senior ANC members who view the proposals as amounting to the "privatisation" of national immigration policy. There are clearly fundamental ANC concerns with matters of substance. But the ANC is constrained in moving the process forward by the fact that (a) Minister Buthelezi is a better ally than foe; and (b) the ANC has not produced its own policy vision or platform around immigration as a guide. The post-1994 process of immigration reform has proceeded to date outside ANC direction and without substantive input from the ANC.
Cabinet remains fundamentally unhappy with the draft Immigration Bill's proposals for a US-style system and once again sent it back to the Ministry (see Back to Square One?). Cabinet also agreed to a special workshop aimed at providing a better understanding of the proposed immigration service's purpose and operation. The workshop for Cabinet ministers was to be held in mid-April. Minister Buthelezi remains confident that the Bill will be passed by Cabinet but others are more skeptical (see Buthelezi Set to Lose on Migration Bill). As a result, the highly-problematical Aliens Control Act of 1991 remains in force and the Department of Home Affairs continues to be successfully challenged in the courts on a variety of counts (see Foreign Marriage and Family Protection Association).
Please check back for future updates on this process.
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