From integration to containment – worrying trends for refugees in SA (Pretoria News)

When Parliament adopted the Refugees Act just more than a decade ago, it was hailed by many as a progressive and modern approach to protect people fleeing persecution and civil strife. South Africa broke from the traditional African approach of accommodating refugees in large rural-based camps. Parliament has also thus far resisted the European and Australian examples of detaining asylum seekers for extended periods in reception centres.

 

Instead, the Act is based on the principle of local integration and voluntary return. It allows refugees to settle and integrate into South African society and extends the constitutional rights and freedoms, such as freedom of movement and access to health and and social services, to refugees and asylum seekers. The logic of the local integration approach is to enable refugees to live meaningful lives while in exile and, further, to make real contributions to the host country until it’s safe for them to return home. Once returned, the local integration approach should also benefit the country of origin in the sense that the returnees would have accrued skills, experience and resources to be able to play a meaningful role in a post conflict society. South Africa also benefits from the local integration policy, since refugees can be productive participants in the economy (if given the opportunity), and not simply charges of the state; as in the camps or detention centres approach.

 

As we celebrate World Refugee Day we need to ask ourselves if we have succeeded in achieving the ideal of local integration as prescribed in the Refugees Act – that is to protect refugees and to allow them to successfully integrate into South African society. Most practitioners in the field would agree that South Africa is failing dismally in this regard. The reasons behind the exclusion of refugees from broader South African society have been well documented. Firstly, the process of determining refugee status continues to be enormously challenging. For an asylum seeker, all aspects of integrating into South African society (access to banking, employment, housing, finding a school for your child, finding healthcare) essentially flow from the granting of valid documentation.

 

Despite the hundreds of millions of rands spent on improving the system for asylum seekers at Home Affairs, most asylum applications have not been processed; leaving asylum seekers without that essential first requirement for local integration. In the face of this backlog of applications, the Crown Mines Refugee Office is, in fact, being closed without any alternative facility being provided in the Johannesburg area. Asylum seekers in this area will now have to travel to Pretoria, with great effort and expense, to offices that are not coping with their current load of applications.

 

South Africa is and is likely to continue to be host to a consistent and fairly large proportion of asylum seekers, due in part to our economy, political stability and, simply, geographical location. The political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has, of course, displaced many people from their homes; with many of them fleeing to South Africa in search of safety and protection. Zimbabwean migrants to South Africa generally come for a range of reasons; the search for safety and protection not, of course, excluding the search for livelihoods and a more secure economic life. The announcement by Cabinet in 2010 to give special recognition to Zimbabweans was a laudable attempt to protect Zimbabweans, not all of whom fit within the strict definition of a refugee. In practice, however, only three months was given for Zimbabweans to register, which was hopelessly inadequate, given the realities of how long it took applicants to obtain the required documentation in their home country. The effect of this is that only a minority of Zimbabweans in South Africa have been able to take advantage of this special dispensation. The Minister has announced that in August 2011, the Department will lift the moratorium on the deportation of Zimbabweans – despite the fact that many, through no fault of their own, remain undocumented and thus at risk of being returned to a country that is increasingly marred by political violence. 

 

To compound the fact that the track record in local integration has been dismal, this essential principle of the Refugees Act is now being rethought. Home Affairs is considering establishing detention centres close to the borders with Zimbabwe and Mozambique to effectively make South Africa a less attractive option for asylum seekers. These detention centres will come at great cost. Not only will it be enormously expensive for the state to detain asylum seekers for extended periods – but the human cost has been shown to be significant. In the end, however, the cost to ourselves will be equally detrimental. Detaining entire classes of people because of some perceived yet ill-defined threat brings us back to a dark past which we promised to each other never to revisit.

 

Given the principles of the Refugee Act, to which we are committed, can we not establish more realistic, costworthy and creative solutions to a challenge that is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. 

 

by Jacob van Garderen