PATRICK BULGER | Smelting point: zama zamas, crime, immigration and the ANC

Finally, when the good folk of Kagiso on Gauteng’s West Rand had at last brought law and order to the area, smoke hung over razed iron shacks, one person lay dead and schoolkids played among the rubble and burning tyres that blocked the road. As calm returned, TV news was reporting that residents were busy beating naked men presumed to be zama zama illegal miners.

It looked like war and maybe that’s what happens when a community reclaims its “sovereignty”. It is war, but to what end?

Over the space of a week we have seen a convergence of the ills that afflict large parts of our society, set against a backdrop of poverty and unemployment, and sparked by the Krugersdorp mine dump rapes and the allegation that foreign zama zamas are to blame.

Crime is an important issue for South Africans, but for poorer South Africans trapped in the ghettoes, especially but not exclusively for women, it has become a matter of life and death.

The Krugersdorp rapes and their apparent link to the zama zamas have focused fresh attention on the coincidence, if any, of nationality (and immigration status) and crime.

The ANC’s national firebrand, Pule Mabe, captured this sentiment when he offered his beanie’s worth at a protest outside the magistrate’s court, saying: “SA is not a playground, it must be understood like that. We are a very serious country. Those who are foreign nationals and want to come to this country must do so legally. Foreign nationals who are in the country illegally have to be taken back home because we cannot afford crimes being committed by foreign nationals who are undocumented.”

But must only foreign nationals who commit crime be sent back to their countries, or is the mere act of being here illegally sufficient of a crime to guarantee your return?

But must only foreign nationals who commit crime be sent back to their countries, or is the mere act of being here illegally sufficient of a crime to guarantee your return?

Certainly that brand-conscious man of the people, Lux Dlamini, insisted he was under the impression only foreign criminals were targeted in his police-assisted raids. He claims he was never aware Dudula was targeting people merely because their crime was being here illegally. If Lux is confused what hope for us?

To home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi, it is undoubtedly a crime to be here illegally. But it’s an interpretation that is blind to our history and the fact that we happen still to be a beacon of prosperity on a continent with millions of poor people who’d rather be somewhere else.

Perhaps that’s what informs the urgency around immigration, because while other government programmes languish or are forgotten in the promise, Motsoaledi’s Border Management Authority is forging ahead. It’s an ambitious project that’s meant to take over the functions of a whole range of government departments, including the police.

Motsoaledi is said to be “ahead’’ of his ANC comrades on immigration policy, which will deal especially with the problem of migration from the rest of Africa, which is the unspoken rationale behind the new approach.

So where else to look for a policy befitting the reality here than to the UK, Canada and Switzerland, which were praised in ANC policy documents? “Furthermore, the Canadian legislation makes a distinction between economic immigrants and refugees,” a party discussion document on immigration notes primly.

One would have thought even the US, which incidentally has millions of “illegal immigrants’’ from South and Latin America living within its borders, gainfully employed and with long family histories there, offers more usable policy options. Perhaps it would have shown up just how closely ANC thinking on immigration now mirrors that of former president Donald Trump.

From a long-history perspective, SA’s mines and the wealth of the country were built in no small part on immigrant African labour. In its apartheid guise, SA went out of its way to frustrate and handicap African economies, and post-1994 we applauded as Robert Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe. Now we want our own Swiss Alps between us and the rest of the continent.

There is even talk of SA quitting the international conventions for refugees, so cold is the blast from Motsoaledi’s office. In the drift towards the jackboot it is as if to compensate for other lapses in governance. For example, the UN convention for refugees stipulates that immigrants be offered a path to naturalisation in their adopted countries. Not only does this not happen in SA as it should, but immigrants who should have become citizens long ago are instead forced to pay bribes to home affairs officials and crooked cops, year after year. That’s how we roll.

Immigrants who should have become citizens long ago are instead forced to pay bribes to home affairs officials and crooked cops, year after year. That’s how we roll.

Clearly there are some in the ANC, and let’s not forget the ANC-hating Herman Mashaba of Action SA, who see the upwelling of community anger against criminals foreign or otherwise as an opportunity to galvanise the movement. It’s a distraction from other problems for which the ANC government’s solutions have been found wanting.

Why else would Mabe enthuse, “As the ANC said, we will stand on the protest line today to help reclaim our own sovereignty to make sure that the ANC can reassert, consolidate and reclaim its ability to lead society’’? But all credit to the police in Kagiso for doing their job and rescuing zama zamas from angry residents. We aren’t Bosnia yet.

With the ANC, it’s either all or nothing. So, after 1994 we threw open our doors to all-comers from Africa; now we’ve had enough, and unless you can comply with Canada-style immigration criteria you might as well take the next taxi back over the Limpopo. Your crime? You are the crime.

It’s as if Operation Dudula has been let loose (or paid who knows how much) to rewrite our immigration policy. Or maybe it was the Swiss.