MICHAEL KAHN | SA’s immigration crisis began long before today’s border debate

“There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi. There is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe…"

So sang Hugh Masekela in his iconic song Stimela. Bra Hugh was doing more than lamenting the fate of migrant mineworkers. He was describing southern Africa’s political economy.

For almost a century, the region revolved around the gold mines of the Witwatersrand that sucked in migrant miners from across southern Africa. Railways carried them south. Wages, however meagre, sustained families in then Nyasaland, Mozambique, the protectorates, and the Rhodesias. The migrant labour system was exploitative and brutal, yet it was the economic glue of an unequal regional economy.

But the train has gone, replaced by the overnight coach, overloaded minibuses and informal networks that carry new migrants seeking their better lives across South Africa. Same destination, but quite different prospects.

On June 30, we narrowly avoided a repeat of the July 2021 unrest. Thanks to state security deployment working with private security companies, the organised anti-immigration protests did not descend into widespread violence. It is dangerously complacent to conclude that we have stepped back from the brink.

Business Day was correct to argue that immigration requires a structural response. Yet the discussion is somewhat ahistoric. The crisis did not begin with Zimbabwe’s economic collapse nor post-apartheid inward migration. It is anchored in the regional political economy of more than a century.

Democratic South Africa maintains the path dependence of the minerals-energy complex that stretches across the Southern African Development Community (Sadc). But migration is not simply a border problem. It is locked into economic geography.

Neighbouring countries supplied labour through the Mine Labour Organisation, while South Africa supplied industrial employment. Migrant labour was not an accident; it was the operating system of the regional economy. The mines recruited from territories that became labour reserves rather than diversified economies.

After 1994, political liberation promised something different. Regional integration through Sadc and, more recently, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) held out the prospect of balanced development across the continent. But trade agreements are not national development strategies. They facilitate exchange without creating productive capacity. AfCFTA aspires to a continental market, but open markets alone do not generate industries. Factories, skills, infrastructure, technological capability and investment do.

It is in this context that the Southern African Customs Union deserves re-examination. Established after the South African War of 1899-1902 it relieved London of fiscal responsibility for the protectorates. The protocols also restricted infant industry protection by the beneficiary parties. Receive a generous share of customs tariffs, but remain at Go. South Africa thereby remains the dominant industrial producer. The regional economy is highly integrated commercially but insufficiently diversified by productive capacity.

So migration is the continuation of a historical pattern. Today’s migrants are often the descendants of men who worked the gold mines. They move south because, its own difficulties aside, eGoli offers more opportunity than its neighbours.

The tragedy is that our economic engine is misfiring. Stats SA’s 2022 income and expenditure survey depicts the strain and pain. Household expenditure exceeds R3-trillion annually, yet more than three-quarters of spending is concentrated in housing, food, transport, insurance and financial services. Households devote an increasing share of their meagre resources (median level about R82,000) to maintaining everyday existence rather than building wealth or investing in the future.

So migration is the continuation of a historical pattern. Today’s migrants are often the descendants of men who worked the gold mines. They move south because, its own difficulties aside, eGoli offers more opportunity than its neighbours.

Unemployment remains stubbornly high, productivity growth is weak, municipal infrastructure continues to deteriorate and public schooling fails the overwhelming majority of children. About four out of five 10-year-olds still cannot read for meaning. Automatic promotion then produces school leavers with weak numeracy and communication skills.

To compound the malaise, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) remains disconnected from industry. Innovation activities are confined to a relatively small number of firms, and the manufacturing share of GDP has steadily lost ground over two decades.

In such circumstances immigration becomes the visible face of deeper structural failure. The newcomer is easier to blame than the collapse of state capability.

None of this excuses illegal migration, criminality or violence. We hold the right and the obligation to manage our borders and enforce immigration laws. Public confidence requires the state to manage immigration competently, fairly and with dignity. It is evident that enforcement cannot solve the fundamental economic problem.

So the politics of resentment fill the gaps. For too long the government has substituted distributive politics for productive politics. New programmes have favoured politically connected groups without expanding the productive base. Patronage is easier than building capability in schooling, service delivery, TVET colleges, logistics systems or industrial competitiveness. Capability building is slow, yet electoral cycles reward immediacy. The economy generates too little growth for citizens and migrants alike.

Until southern Africa builds more than one engine of growth, the buses will keep arriving

This is why immigration has become such an emotionally charged issue. It is a proxy for frustration over unemployment, inequality, crime and dismal public services. As John Lennon, not Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, wrote, “life goes on while (government) is busy making plans”, thereby allowing populists to seize the gap. History teaches that scapegoating others rarely ends well.

Southern Africa needs better regional integration. That means infrastructure linking markets, coordinated industrial strategies, greater investment in productive capability, more effective TVET, and managed labour mobility that recognises economic realities rather than pretending that they do not exist.

Until southern Africa builds more than one engine of growth, the buses will keep arriving, frustration will continue to accumulate and the politics of resentment will deepen on both sides of the border. The railway platforms of Masekela’s Stimela have given way to crowded bus depots and overloaded minibuses crossing borders every day. The vehicles have changed, but the journey remains the same.

The question confronting us is whether we have the imagination and the political courage to build something better in its place.

Kahn is a research fellow at Stellenbosch University and a visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg.