AFRICAN CONTINENTAL MIGRANTS IN THE CITY
4.2 DEFINING IMMIGRANTS, MIGRANTS, FOREIGNERS, ALIENS AND ILLEGALS
If one assumes that generally a migrant is any person who leaves his or her country of origin to live for an extended period of time, or temporarily resides without official residency status or citizenship in another country, then enumerating such persons in South Africa is a very difficult exercise. In a piece of research such as this enumeration is difficult because such persons, which I shall collectively call foreign migrants for now, have no interest in participating in such a census exercise precisely because their status legal, or illegal, is a precarious one (Reitzes, 1998: 21). Furthermore official statistics on cross-border transitions from other parts of Africa into South Africa is either incomplete,
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or extremely difficult to rely on because of the variety of terms used to designate who is a visitor, immigrant, migrant, undocumented migrant, refugee, asylum seeker, alien, and undocumented immigrant / migrant. Indeed a host of scholars have called into question official statistics (Wilmot, et. al, 1997; Bernstein, et. al. 1997; Bouillon, 2001: 20-21).
A number of terms are in current use to designate someone who is not South African. For example, 'foreigner', 'alien', 'immigrant', 'illegal' are used loosely and interchangeably in public discourse, in the media and in political circles. Danso and McDonald make the point that media coverage of immigration is 'largely anti-immigrant and unanalytical, often reproducing racial and national stereotypes' (2001: 1-2). An alien is not a foreigner, and in tum is not the same thing as an immigrant or migrant (Reitzes, 1998: 20-21). Some foreigners are immigrants, but many foreigners in South Africa have no desire to live here permanently, or even for extended periods of time that may qualify them as 'immigrants'. Indeed some foreigners may not qualify as immigrants given the strict limitations in law as to who is an immigrant and who is not. There is also the issue that some immigrants become naturalised citizens, but at the same time do not give up their previous nationality, or passports (or in many of such cases carry two different passports). This last category of person may more accurately be described as 'foreign nationals' .
However for the purposes of this thesis, the major consideration is who is an immigrant and who is a migrant. Later I shall make finer distinctions about refugees and asylum seekers, and how best, for the purposes of this research should they be conceptualised in terms of the immigrant/migrant dichotomy.
An 'immigrant' in South African legal terms is a foreign resident who is not naturalised, but can become a South African, remain a foreigner, or combine both options (as suggested above). An immigrant is generally considered a person who intends to live permanently in the country, and assimilate into the general popUlation. During the years prior to 1994 assimilation implied a white person of good standing and health. (For an analysis of the legislation relating to immigration and its changing racial configurations
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see Peberdy and Crush, 1998). Although the cruder aspects of race have been repealed from the legislation of the new South Africa, an immigrant aspiring to be a permanent resident must have 'a good reputation' and be 'desirable'. In addition the immigrant is subject to the Aliens Control Act (No 96, 1991, as amended, Act no 76, 1995), which apart from its surveillance intent, stipulates that such immigrants must satisfy the needs of the country. In other words they must not compete with nationals for employment if there is already an abundance of similar skilled people.
Historically, a migrant in South African terms meant a person who was temporarily in the country to serve specific needs usually in terms of a labour contract. The term 'migrant' in South Africa is closely associated with the apartheid system of internal migration from rural areas to serve the needs of the mining or manufacturing sectors of the urban economy, or the contracts for mine workers from neighbouring countries such as Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho. In these terms migrants were always temporary sojourners, working on fixed contracts, usually of 12 months duration without any rights to family life, permanent residence or access to property, and enjoying no other rights save those which were minimally granted to them in terms of their contract, or negotiated by their trade union, while living in hostels and compounds. It should also be noted for many rural migrants, it was argued by the apartheid regime, could exercise their citizenship rights in the so-called independent homelands, but not in white South Africa.
However if they wished to travel abroad they could do so on South African passports.
(The independent homelands were not recognised internationally.) In short in the decades prior to 1994 both local rural migrants and migrants from other countries working in South Africa enjoyed no basic rights associated with citizenship. One should add that while an immigrant, usually white and from Europe, could, in a short space of time became a citizen of South Africa, a migrant (usually black) could never legally attain that status. To add to the confusion, it was possible under apartheid for urban black South African residents to attain citizenship, but no associated rights such as the vote, freedom of movement or association. However, the idea of temporary or transient workers is probably what best describes contemporary migrants from other parts of Africa in South
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Africa, whether they are here voluntarily, that is, they came here of their own volition, or as refugees and asylum seekers.
This perverse set of binary opposites, immigrant and migrant, white and black, citizens and non-citizens, still resonates through the public discourse on foreigners in South Africa. There is a widespread tendency to label all immigrants coming from Africa as 'illegal', 'aliens' or 'illegal aliens'. This indiscriminate use ofterms does not distinguish among legal immigrants, foreign Africans who legally enter the country, refugees and asylum seekers, those that enter the county clandestinely or illegally and those that enter legally but outstay their visa conditions. The last two categories of migrants may be termed, in less emotional and more neutral language, undocumented workers or migrants.
Nor does this usage of terms distinguish between immigrants who intend to settle or reside permanently in the country, and migrants who are here temporarily. This lack of clarity between immigrant and migrant is also echoed in the Aliens Control Act, which is silent on policy towards temporary migrant workers, but nevertheless currently renders them all illegal (Reitzes, 1998: 20-21). Further confusion is added when displaced people like the civilian refugees from the decades-long armed struggle in Mozambique (in which the former South Africa regime instigated and provided assistance to RENAMO) were not, until recently, recognised under international conventions as refugees, which curtailed their freedom of movement and ability to find work in South Africa. (They did, however, enjoy the concession that they could work for white farmers near the borders at lower rates of pay.) This added to the image of Mozambique's displaced people in South Africa as quintessentially legal vagabonds, thieves and a drain on the country's resources.
This image is easily transferred to migrants from other African countries.
Furthermore, from the point of view of African migrants themselves, having a passport is not necessarily an indication of their place of origins. In a continent with large movements of people, many forced because of wars, coups, and massacres, others because of their own volitional movements, nationality becomes arbitrary and ambiguous. In these cases nationality and citizenship depend on situational circumstances and how place of origin, parents' nationality, permanent residency, land
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ownership (or lack of it), religion and language becomes an ensemble of elements in constructing one's identity. Other factors that have to do with the presentation of identity to enter a country are associated both with the perception and reality of how difficult or simple it is to enter into a country. These become consideration as people make decisions what migration route to take, and changes both to the route taken and the identity adopted en route. Thus as Bouillon points out (2001: 23), migratory movements may be one or more of several possibilities depending on circumstances and possible alternatives:
'irreversible' movements (a single change of residence); 'reversible' movements of long duration (organised work migration); renewed reversibility (daily and seasonal movements); sporadic reversibility (movements depending on opportunities and situations to respond to) and movements with uncertain reversibility.
Given these considerations about the public and legal understanding or misunderstanding of who is a foreign migrant, immigrant, refugee or asylum seeker, and various situations and circumstances such people fmd themselves in, it is very difficult to know what exactly that is being measured in terms of the current nomenclature that is being used by the South African state, and what exactly is being debated in public.
However that has not stopped people - researchers, cabinet ministers, politicians, the media and the public - from estimating what is inaccurately and clumsily described as 'foreigners', 'illegals', and 'immigrants'. These terms are used interchangeably or as compound nouns (illegal foreigners, illegal immigrants). Bouillon (2001: 23-24) has summarised these pronouncements on the number of illegal immigrants for the period
1989 to 1994 thus:
In less than a decade the estimated number of illegal immigrants according to government and other influential sources increased from approximately 1 million to 5 million and then to 9.5 million. In 1988/9 the South African Yearbook estimated - on the basis of unspecified sources - that there were 1.2 million illegal black immigrants; in 1992 the estimate increased to 2.5 million; in 1993 to 3 million and in 1994 to 5 million.
Politicians did not query these figures. Danie Schutte, the Minister of Home Affairs in 1993, stated that according to the census of 1991 (which is regarded as a flawed census)
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there were 906 000 foreigners in South Africa, including 245 000 illegal aliens. His successor in the new democratic government of 1994, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, said in parliament that there were two million illegal foreigners. He followed this claim with a statement in January 1995 that 'either we chase the foreigners out of the country, or it's the end of the RDP'. He later conceded that it is not possible to get an exact number of undocumented immigrants, but they, the Department Home Affairs, had to rely on estimates and projections to fonnulate policy (Parliamentary Media Briefmg, February, 1998, p5, quoted in Reitzes 1998: 7). It is precisely this need to quantify, in whatever fonn, that is critiqued as a misplaced focus of policy attention (Reitzes, 1995; 1997, 1998; Crush andPeberdy, 1998; Bouillon, 2001).
One might excuse the excesses of politicians when it comes to inflating immigrant figures, but the South African Police Services released a press statement in June 1995 claiming that there were 8.5 million 'illegals' in the country, a figure that is approximately 20% of the total South African population. The International Labour Organisation'S office in Pretoria called the latter figure 'astounding", and the National Labour Market Commission stated the figures were unreasonable (1997: 1). One might have thought this would spur a debate on South Africa as a nation of immigrants, but in fact the very opposite took place, of a nation swamped and infested with immigrants.
Adding to the notion of being swamped by 'illegals' was perhaps the worst estimate of the number of foreigners and illegals in the country. This was by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) researchers Minnaar and Hough. They estimated, on the basis of very dubious methods, a sub-set of statistics culled from four surveys conducted between December 1994 and October 1995, that there were between 5.1 and 9.5 million illegal immigrants in South Africa. Taking the higher figure of 9.5 million people, this would mean that the numbers of immigrants are roughly a quarter of the country's population, which at face value seems grossly exaggerated. Minnaar's and Hough's methods, based on perception and a technique called 'spotting' have already been repudiated (see Crush, 1997; Bouillon, 2001; Orkin, 2002; De Klerk, 2002). But this kind of research is problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, the HSRC is the premier social science research institute in the country, whose research methods are expected to
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be flawless. The research results therefore lend an aura of authority to the conclusions reached, and are therefore believed by many from government ministers, to bureaucrats and the pUblic. Secondly, the stamp of authority associated with HSRC means that their research may be used for policy formulation, and implementation of those policies by the state. Although this research was subsequently repudiated by the HSRC, it is surprising is that it took almost 6 years for such a repudiation. Indeed the release of such statistics, real, imagined or halfbaked did have social and political consequences. These are briefly summarised below.
The context and consequences of releasing such figures in a climate of increasing xenophobia and racism served only to increase tension, and create a climate of hostility and in many cases unwarranted harassment of African foreigners by both those in authority, such as the South African Police Services and officials of the Department of Home Affairs, and by the public, particularly local street traders and the unemployed.
Given the Minister of Home Affairs position on 'foreigners' (as quoted above), it is not surprising that there has been an attempt at greater surveillance and control of illegal immigrants. This is evidenced by the greater control given Home Affairs officials in terms of the Aliens Control Act, and the greater efforts made at deporting 'illegals' (and it might be argued with less parliamentary accountability and oversight). Officials at border posts took a stronger interest in African arrivals and departures, particularly after 1993/4. This increased control over foreign migration and immigration is evidenced in the increasing number of repatriations taking place, the building of the famous, or now infamous, Lindela Holding Centre, and debate over how to patrol the very porous South African borderl. It has been reported that 180 000 illegal immigrants are deported every year (15000 every month or 500 a day) to about 92 countries world-wide. Most of these are from Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and that in 1999 approximately 87% of the 120 000 undocumented immigrants in the Lindela Holding Centre were from these two countries (Guyevu, 2002: 2). It should be noted that very few illegal immigrants are
I There are 350 registered airports but thereare police at only a few of them. There are official border crossing ~o.sts with all neighbouring countries (Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, and Namibia), but many more unofficial crossing points.
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deported to other African countries (Bouillon, 2001: 32). The 200km electric fence bordering Mozambique has been extended (there was a debate within ANC circles as to whether it should be switched on or not). An agreement with the Mozambican government made allowances for the South African anny to pursue and track down drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
Increased control has not stopped the arrival of immigrants and migrants from many African countries. Such migration occurs, much to the surprise of newly arrived foreign migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, in a social climate of xenophobia, hostility and outright racism from many South Africans towards their northern neighbours. And while the new immigrants and migrants go about re-establishing their lives as best they can, particularly as no assistance is offered by the state to asylum seekers and refugees, there is a constant stream of daily harassment by the police force. In indication of this is seen in a number of incidents of police raids, and the problems immigrants face trying to obtain the correct 'papers' from officials in the Department of Home Affairs. The media has also participated in this xenophobia by constantly publishing letters from readers who make accusations that foreigners take away jobs, and business opportunities from street traders, abuse social services such as health and education, and steal local women, without much rebuttal or editorial columns challenging this point of view (see Bouillon, 2001: 25-26, for discussion on this point). In this chapter, and in the thesis as a whole, some of these accusations will be shown be less than credible.
What is clear from the above analysis is that it is impossible to produce reliable statistics on migrants, and in particular illegal immigrants. As Mike de Klerk, Executive Director of the HSRC's research programme on Integrated Rural and Regional Development, noted,
Precisely because undocumented immigrants have an interest in concealing or misrepresenting their status in surveys or official enquiries, there cannot be a reliable method for estimating their extent. (25 April 2002, press release).
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Repudiation of the HSRC's discredited statistics has not stopped government officials and newspapers from continuing to cite them (Crush and Peberdy, n.d.: 10). What is clear is that the production of 'statistics' is done by those agencies of the state that have the most interest in inflating such numbers such as the police, security forces, and government departments such as the Department of Home Affairs who are responsible for producing and implementing immigration policy. Terms such as 'aliens' and 'illegal immigrants' are then used as negative conceptual categories which in turn feed into the decades-long racial consciousness of the public, thus contributing to and feeding off intolerance and outright hostility to anyone who is remotely not considered one of 'us' , and thus a threat. Such people so designated, and sometimes quite mistakenly including South Africans who are a few shades darker than the local black African population, are all aliens and by definition 'illegals'. In this sense it is possible to present caricatures of 'foreigners', forestalling any meaningful analysis and discussion of why and how such people arrive in South African, and what such foreigners do to assimilate or insert themselves into the economy and society. (For an analysis of the media role in perpetuating these images, see Danso and McDonald, 2001)
This thesis will focus attention on issues why, how and what foreign migrants from Africa do in practice, specifically migrants from Malawi living in Durban. A further issue will be what implications this has for policy, and more importantly citizenship. Cognisant of the pitfalls of using rigid quantitative methods, data was collected by combining both qualitative techniques such as long-term participant observation and the use of in-depth key informant interviews, and a limited and careful use of a survey by using a snowballing technique. The data produced in this way will not give any absolute enumeration of foreign migrants, but endorses the point of view expressed by Mike de Klerk that:
Prospective policy can rather seek to attend flexibly to the reasons for such immigration, how immigrants are treated, what immigrants do when they are here, and the implications (25 April 2002, press release).
The point really is that foreign migrants are here anyway. As a highly developed economy, relative to other African countries, and perceived as having greater
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opportunities, combined with the attraction of democracy and the rule of law, migrants from other countries are more than likely to be attracted here (see also Guyevu, 2002, 160-6; 182-83, for a similar argument about the 'pull' factors that exert such a powerful attraction to South Africa).
This study can be seen as part of a slow but growing literature on foreign migrants in South Africa. The rest of this chapter will focus on official data on legal foreigners, and refugees and asylum seekers for the 1990s. This will provide additional context in which to locate the Malawians and other African migrants in Durban. The review will then focus on those studies undertaken, mainly, though not exclusively, in Johannesburg. This study, located in relation to those studies in Gauteng, should also be seen as part of widening our understanding of foreign migrants, particularly in another major South African urban centre, namely Durban.