This year looks set to be another gloomy one for asylum
seekers, as the ANC government makes a renewed attempt to deport and restrict
the number of African migrants to South Africa. Black Africans are not welcome
anywhere, even as tourists, and must jump through dozens of hoops to apply for
visas to enter almost every country in the world to prove their worthiness. It
has become fashionable for governments globally to decry the fact that people
of colour are seeking asylum when in fact they are 'economic migrants' making
contrived claims of persecution. Given the Black South Africans experience
indignities when applying for visas to Europe, Australia and North America, it
is continually disappointing when the ANC government concocts new ways to keep
other Black Africans out of South Africa.
A strange new form for asylum seekers now compels applicants
to provide pay slips, details of property owned and to reveal how much money
they have. It is still not known what this information will be used for, since
governments are only supposed to assess applications for asylum based on the
level of persecution faced in the home country - not the amount of money in the
applicants' bank accounts. In 2013, only two out of 12 000 applicants were
granted asylum and the new 'asylum seekers' form is likely part of government's
quest to rid South Africa completely of genuine asylum seekers and allow in
only those with money.
In South Africa, an estimated 50 000 Zimbabweans are facing
deportation soon for failing to apply for permission to stay in South Africa
under the new 'Zimbabwean Special Permit' system. Every four years or so, the
South African government attempts to get rid of Zimbabwean migrants but instead
succeeds only in creating fear, panic and ultimately highlighting the
deficiency of its own systems.
In 2010, the government gave just three months warning that
it would end a 'special dispensation' for Zimbabweans. This progressive
dispensation was started to allow Zimbabweans free access to South Africa
during the Zimbabwean cholera epidemic of 2009, for 90 days at a time without
passports and without fearing deportation. But ending the special dispensation
failed mainly because the Zimbabwean government would not issue Zimbabwean
passports to its citizens in time for them to apply for the permits, and also
because the department of Home Affairs could not process the number of
applications anyway. Similarly, Home Affairs has already admitted that the new
'Special Permit' system for "regularising" Zimbabweans has been
plagued by "a lot of technical glitches", including - again - the
failure of the Home Affairs' call centre to answer thousands of calls from
those who wanted to apply for permits.
Home Affairs' top officials said in 2010 that they planned
to follow the "regularising" of Zimbabwean migrants by documenting
Malawians, Angolans, DRC citizens and others from Africa in the same way. This
has not materialised, thankfully.
No similar race based country-by-country purge was planned
for white migrants from Europe and North America, who are generally prized by
the DA and ANC governments for the "skills" they bring to South
Africa. Institutional racism is deeply embedded in South Africa with the
Commission for Employment Equity's annual report continuing to reveal that
whites still occupy most senior management and top management positions. It is
for this reason that Black Consciousness activists have pointed out in the past
that xenophobia in South Africa is more accurately described as afrophobia, and
that the DA and ANC governments are generally afrophobic.
An astonishing tweet by COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima
Vavi this week, decrying Asian shop owners in townships, indicates how far the
phobia of migrants of colour has spread. "We condemn xenophobia but the
current displacement of Africans even in spaza shops mainly by guys from East
is not politically sustainable", tweeted Vavi. Being the country's leader
of organised workers, Vavi knows better than most that the biggest problem
facing the South African Black working class and poor is not Asian spaza shop
owners in the townships but the out-dated free market system adopted by the ANC
and DA governments. Jobs in manufacturing have been slashed, profits from the
mining industry continue to flow to a tiny elite, and the ANC is dead set
against nationalising even the unallocated mineral deposits, which could fund
the redevelopment of the whole country, let alone the mines themselves.
for Vavi to be tweeting against "guys from the
East", is absurd. Migrant workers are not to blame for the high levels of
unemployment. Vavi's tweet, although made against Asian migrants, will increase
xenophobic sentiment in general, and consequently fuel afrophobia against spaza
shop owners from Africa. Criticism of Asian migrants today quickly leads to
resentment of African migrants tomorrow. Under South Africa's free market
economic system, deporting African migrants and asylum seekers and encouraging
xenophobia against Asian migrants will not uplift the Black poor and working
class whose lives seem set to continue to deteriorate until the ANC and DA
governments are voted out of power completely.
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