South Africa Not Engaging Potential of African Migrants

by Global News Digest

Since the early 1990's, when the Apartheid regime was finally brought to an end, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from other African countries, looking for a better life, have poured into South Africa.

Managing a heavy stream of immigrants from neighboring countries is nothing new in South Africa. Throughout the Apartheid era the country was at the receiving end (and encouraged) a flow of labor migrants looking for work in the mines of South Africa. Many of those migrants were not just economic refugees, they were also escaping war in such places as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. They were readily employed in the hard and dangerous mining works. Their lives, along with that of native South African Black miners, were strictly controlled. They lived in cramped hostels without their women or families.

The reasons they come may not have changed very much, the immigrants to post-Apartheid South Africa are far different from their counterparts during the segregationist era. For one thing, they come from further afield. Many of them are from West Africa - Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone etc. They are not looking for work in the mines. Most are well educated. Their movements are not restricted. Still they face great obstacles to work and proper employment in South Africa.

Quoting a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a headline story in the December 12, 2003 issue of the Mail & Guardian claims that the skills of some of the most highly qualified African refugees are being wasted in South Africa.

According to figures given in the M&G story South Africa shelters 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers from other African countries, chiefly Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Congo-Brazzaville, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Liberia and Cameroon.

A two-year study of these migrants found that two-thirds of them had at least a secondary certificate or equivalent and were gainfully employed in skilled jobs before coming to South Africa. One-third had some form of tertiary education.

What the migrants want most in South Africa are, to find employment (56%) and, be made legitimate -- given documentation -- (53%). However, since coming to South Africa, 25 per cent of them have remained unemployed. Most are under-employed and face discrimination when it comes to receiving social services.

The average family income of the 1500 migrants studied is R650 ($100) a month. About half of them cannot afford to send their children to school in South Africa. They are often turned away when they seek emergency medical services even though by law they have as much right to primary education and medical services as do South Africans.

Of those who applied for documentation after April 2000 when the Refugee Act was passed, 71 per cent remains without documentation, while 27 per cent of applicants prior to April 2000 are still waiting for their documents.

Home affairs Director General, Barry Gilder, blames the backlog on a department that was "seriously understaffed, under-utilising technology and experiencing a backlog in processing applications for asylum and refugee status," but promises that "...the documentation of refugees, including identity documents, will soon be processed in exactly the same way as they are for other South Africans."

Fedde Groot, a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) in South Africa acknowledges that the world body and the South African government "need to recognize their [migrants'] rights" and he says, "South Africa itself needs to realize how much it can benefit from the talented and resourceful people that have found a safe haven in their country."

Chief UNHCR Representative in South Africa, Bemma Donkoh, plans to use the information garnered from the study to work with the South African government in identifying where the needs are.

"They [the migrants] can and would like to contribute to the well-being of South Africa if only they are afforded the ability to do so," Donkoh said.