By Abbey Makoe
This week’s trending statement on social media, purporting to originate from former DA parliamentarian Phumzile Van Damme, reveals the deep depth of the rot that plagues our public governance system.
The social media post made its way in the wake of the controversy surrounding Miss SA contestant, Chidimma Adetshina. The furore over Adetshina’s participation in the pageant triggered the Department of Home Affairs to conduct a swift investigation into the authenticity of her citizenship.
At lightning speed, the Department publicly communicated its findings, revealing its “prima facie” evidence of “fraud” by Adetshina’s mother that had led to her acquisition of SA citizenship.
Twenty-four hours later Adetshina announced her withdrawal from the pageant. Now, it is not my intention to have a go at Adetshina. If her citizenship is unlawful, as the Home Affairs officials have found, the guilt has been traced to the mother, and not the child.
She probably grew up in SA, attended school here, learnt the cultures and languages and grew up to become an honest, hard-working young woman with guts and determination to follow her dreams. Those circumstances beyond her control have caught up with her as she was reaching for the stars, and it is a matter of great personal shame.
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But the whole saga has lit the torch on SA’s perennial nightmare: Porous borders! Additionally, the ease with which SA identity books can be fraudulently acquired has cost our country’s image and reputation to take a massive beating in the international arena.
The UK was among the first developed economies to impose restrictions on travellers from SA, requiring a visa application when none was required for many years. Immigration is an inevitable consequence in a globalizing world, where the movement of people is necessitated by a myriad of factors that include conflict, persecution or economic hardships.
From time immemorial, human beings have moved from one corner of the universe to another. The role of effective immigration management starts with borders that are strictly guarded and controlled, where graft and under-handed dealings have no place.
When corruption becomes a norm, as is the case in SA border control authority, hordes of illegal immigrants inevitably overwhelm the country’s public governance systems. The majority of the illegal immigrants unavoidably become a social nuisance. In SA, where scores of immigrants are undocumented, criminality is almost impossible to resolve as untraceable offenders run amok with impunity. It does not matter how efficient the police finger-printing unit could be, if offenders are not in the national database at the Department of Home Affairs criminals are guaranteed a hell of a good time.
The depths of corruption in our governance system were aptly captured by the social media post allegedly by Ms Van Damme, a one-time DA parliamentary firebrand who served in the powerful Portfolio Committee on Communications. She left the party’s high echelons acrimoniously.
As I said, I am taking interest mainly in the content of the post more than in its alleged author. For those who might have missed the post, it read: “I am a Swaziland citizen by birth and hold dual citizenship for both South Africa and Swaziland. I couldn’t be an MP in the country of my birth but was able to effortlessly become an MP in South Africa. I can challenge anyone anytime who can claim that the DA has a strict vetting process because even now they have a lot of foreigners within their ranks who are holding public office (councillors, mayors, MECs, MPs and even ministers). In fact, South African intelligence is weak and poor hence a lot of foreigners are even occupying high offices in both the private and public sectors. Illegal foreign nationals getting government bursaries, jobs, houses, free health care and social grants,” the post ended.
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Not long ago, during her tenure as Health MEC for Limpopo, Dr Phophi Ramathuba, who is now the current Premier of the province, lost her marbles and let rip into the “illegal” immigrants in the maternity ward who had only recently jumped the border to come and give birth in SA, and thereby benefit from the stretched healthcare services.
Morally, health facilities cannot turn away patients at the door who knock to seek for medical assistance. As I indicated earlier, the challenge for our hospitals inland emanates from the porous borders and corrupt activities there.
I am acutely aware that SA authorities do make an effort to turn the tide, as seen by the recent imprisonment to 12 years of one Ms Zuma who was convicted of issuing nearly 200 fraudulent ID cards to illegal immigrants.
The ramifications of such corrupt activities are far-reaching and impactful. Such recipients of fraudulent ID books could, if undetected, participate in the country’s electoral processes, where citizens elect their public office bearers.
At worst, illegal immigrants could end up running for public office themselves, and successfully. In Johannesburg’s CBD, once the country’s respectable economic heartbeat, most buildings have been hijacked by brazen illegal immigrants who have turned them into the hubs of illegal activities. In fact, even almost all of the languages in the notice boards are foreign. None of SA’s 12 official languages feature in such hijacked buildings and spoken languages on arrival serve as a stark reminder of how regressive SA’s democracy has been.
But it is not only the public servants who should shoulder the responsibility for the rot that plague our society. As the social media post allegedly by Ms Van Damme points out, inside the DA, party office-bearers with questionable credentials are having a mighty good time.
When the Government of National Unity was recently enacted, question marks were raised over one or two DA ministers’ citizenship status. But as always, the questions have quickly fizzled out. It is business as usual.
Even inside the leading ANC, there have been many questions raised over the authenticity of past and present ministers and public office-bearers.
This is a headache not only for the country’s border control authorities. It is a malady that has permeated every sphere of our lives. From next-door neighbours to colleagues especially in the higher education sector, too many foreigners do work that unemployed South Africans could, and should, be doing.
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This is a great pity. To think of the history of our nation, and the struggles for freedom waged by our forebears, it is heart-breaking that a growing number of black people have begun to miss the “good old times of the Bantustans”. It does not mean they are blind to the horrors of apartheid. I believe their expressions are a reflection of the extent of their disappointment in our new rulers.
Very easily, “new Ms SA 2024” could have been an illegal immigrant had no alarm been raised. Other examples of our democracy’s disordered faults of progress include the hospitality industry which is dominated by illegal immigrants who are hired ahead of the locals because it is easy to trample on their labour rights. The art of worker exploitation extends to the construction industry which is notorious for hiring illegal immigrants. So is the agricultural sector, particularly in the farms. And the trucking industry can be a nightmare on our national roads. But the trophy must go Department of Higher Education, which has the knack of appointing foreigners as Principals and Vice Chancellors when the skillset can be found ubiquitously across the length and breadth of Azania.
For the record, I am not opposed to foreigners being hired in any positions in SA. However, the citizens of the land, whose forefathers and foremothers paid the ultimate price so the present and future generations could lead better lives, deserve to be prioritized.
Unless, and only if skills cannot be sourced locally, legislation must compel both the public and private sectors to start looking outside of our borders as a last-ditch measure.
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South Africa is credited with a raft of progressive laws. However, as many would agree, our government’s ability to implement its own laws leaves much to be desired.
Unless we get our house in order, nay, our country – soon we will have a President who is an illegal immigrant. Watch the space. I’m not being xenophobic. Every nation must ensure the orderly movement of all people, and an effective immigration control system is a prerequisite.
This is a fundamental requirement in the determination of how national budgets are worked out, and resource allocation rolled out. Pardon me for crying out loud, but to allocate government housing to illegal foreigners at the expense of desperate and destitute South Africans languishing in squalor and filth in overcrowded townships is a sure recipe for social upheavals. Forewarned is forearmed.
*Abbey Makoe is Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network
