Home Affairs 'is lying'
Although the Department of Home Affairs claimed new visa regulations were needed to protect tens of thousands of children who were trafficked in South Africa, it now appears it was a gross exaggeration.
Home Affairs has for some time quoted a figure of 30,000 children being trafficked in or through South Africa annually to justify the draconian new visa regulations, which have the tourism industry up in arms.
The reality is that only 23 cases of child-trafficking have been uncovered in the past three years.
Most recently, Home Affairs director-general Mkuseli Apleni told parliament's portfolio committee on Home Affairs that "it is estimated that 30,000 minors are trafficked through RSA borders every year and 50% of these minors are under 14 years".
Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba recently told child advocacy groups that sub-Saharan Africa reported the highest share of child-trafficking in the world .
The department claims that the visa regulations for those travelling with children, introduced on June 1, are in response to this growing threat.
The regulations require the consent of both parents for children to travel as well as the presentation of an unabridged birth certificate.
However, a parliamentary reply to a question by the DA's Dianne Kohler Barnard indicates that:
These figures do not appear to include any cases of South African children trafficked abroad or internal trafficking practices such as ukuthwala, in which young girls are married off, or of young boys and girls being forced to be labourers.
Africa Check - a non-profit organisation promoting media accuracy - researched the statistics in 2013 and found little data to substantiate the claims.
The figure first emerged in media reports in 2013; however, Africa Check could not source the documents on which the claims were apparently based.
Jacob van Garderen, national director for Lawyers for Human Rights, said "human trafficking is a serious human rights violation but there is no credible data or research that shows that it is a serious concern in South Africa".
The African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits said on its website: "At present there is no systematic research available that provides comprehensive insight into the prevalence or patterns of trafficking into or out of South Africa or Southern Africa."
It cites a report by the International Organisation on Migration, which states that between 2004 and 2010, it assisted 306 victims of human trafficking in the Southern African region.
A UN report released last year says police investigated a total number of 40 cases (children and adults) of trafficking in 2011/12 and 2012/13.
It says 155 victims (adults and children) of trafficking were found in South Africa in that same period, and 57 of these were cases of trafficking in South Africa; 61 of the victims came from Thailand, 33 from other African countries and four from "other" countries.
Van Garderen said Home Affairs used the threat of trafficking to push policy issues.
He pointed to a Pretoria High Court judgment last week around the granting of asylum permits to children who were dependent on family members after being abandoned or orphaned.
Lawyers for Human Rights argued that these children should be given refugee status with their caregivers in South Africa even if official guardianship had not been granted to the family members.
Home Affairs argued that the Department of Social Development would first need to do an investigation to ensure that the children were not being trafficked.
But Judge Tati Makgoka ruled that the undocumented children faced a bigger risk of being trafficked or abducted if they were undocumented as they were "invisible and untraceable within the Home Affairs database".
Patric Solomons, director of children's organisation Molo Songololo, said though he did not know where the 30 000 figure came from "we really don't know how big the problem is in South Africa."
These new regulations have hit the tourism industry hard.
According to an impact assessment report compiled by the Tourism Business Council of SA, by this year the number of lost tourists due to changes in immigration regulations is likely to be 100000 with a loss of R1.4-billion to the economy.
Deputy Minister of Justice John Jeffery told a UN event in April that South Africa had prosecuted several trafficking cases, and a further 19 remained on the court roll at the time. These included instances of trafficking within South Africa.
Gigaba's spokesman Mayihlome Tshwete was travelling with the minister in India this week and did not respond to queries. Several attempts to contact Apleni were unsuccessful.