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SA must manage borders - Mbeki
05/06/2008 19:26 - (SA)
Pretoria - The emphasis in SA's immigration policy should be management rather than combating or control, said deputy home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba on Thursday.
However, Moeletsi Mbeki, chair of the SA Institute for International Affairs, said ultimately the responsibility lay with the government.
He disagreed with Gigaba about more open borders, saying citizens would control borders by other means - such as xenophobic attacks - if the government did not do so.
Speaking at an Institute for Security Studies seminar on the recent xenophobic attacks, Gigaba said the tide of migration could not be stemmed - neither could the disappearance of borders.
"The worst thing we can do under these circumstances as a country is to become conservative and draconian as this would encourage irregular migration and make migration management unworkable and unsustainable."
He expressed scepticism about deportation calling it an "expensive, but futile" exercise.
Gigaba, however, accepted that border management needed to be improved.
'Slogans not enough'
He repeated statements by Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula that the country needed to provide a "special dispensation" for economic migrants from elsewhere in the Southern African Development Community.
Jody Kollapen, chairperson of the Human Right Commission, said South Africa had not done enough to move beyond slogans of the "rainbow nation" and "being African".
The recent xenophobic violence as well as incidents involving race and gender issues was proof of this.
"The question should not be what happened to loving each other, maybe we should ask did we ever love each other?"
He warned that if issues such as poverty among ordinary South Africans were not addressed, incidents such as xenophobic violence would continue.
Responsible for control
Mbeki said: "Our borders are not flexible ... you have to enforce your borders. If you think you do not have to control your borders, then you are not a state; you are a half-state," he said.
He reminded the government that it was responsible for controlling the country.
"You cannot just throw up your hands in the air and say it is happening, it cannot stop and let it happen," he said.
- SAPA
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