South Africa’s response can be characterized as ad hoc. In comparison with the other case studies in the book, it represents an intermediate response to the new challenges of survival migration. On the one hand, its national asylum system partly stretched to cover the situation of the Zimbabweans: the asylum system was able to adapt somewhat through making asylum seeker permits available to all, and starting in April 2009, the government began at least to consider alterna-tive ways to protect the Zimbabweans. On the other hand, adaptation was not a serious priority for the government, and serious political engagement with the issue was late and involved limited adaptation to the situation, leaving significant gaps in protection. The question is, why?
Following the conceptual framework outlined earlier in the book, this section identifies the sets of incentives on the government to adapt and stretch the no-tion of who is a refugee. It examines the domestic and internano-tional incentives on government elites and, in both cases, finds countervailing tendencies. In one direction, there was pressure from civil society and the international community to respect the human rights of Zimbabweans and not deport them. In the other direction, though, domestic pressure created by increasing xenophobia and in-ternational limitations created by the desire of the government to maintain a strong bilateral relationship with Zimbabwe curtailed serious political engage-ment with the problem.
Domestic
Domestic public opinion has created an ambivalent set of incentives for the government’s engagement with the Zimbabwean influx. On the one hand, post-apartheid South Africa has attempted to uphold a commitment to respecting the rights of migrants, based on a form of Pan-African cosmopolitanism. This has its roots in the apartheid history of the country and the transnational solidarity that emerged between black South Africans and the citizens and governments of neighboring states that frequently offered sanctuary and political support to South African exiles. The idea had one of its most vocal expressions in former
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president Thabo Mbeki’s famous “South Africa for Africans” speech in the late 1990s, and strikes a chord with cultural notions of ubuntu , which implies an Af-rica for AfAf-ricans. In migration policy, the implications of this idea are that there are normative restrictions on the extent to which regional migration policy can be developed in a purely exclusionary and narrowly self-interested way. The idea can be found in the policy justifications of decision makers in almost all branches of the South African government that work on migration:
During Apartheid days, many South Africans were in exile. They were accommodated by neighboring states. There is a need to reciprocate. It made us look at migrants in a very different way. (Director, Immigra-tion Policy, Department of Home Affairs) 20
When Mbeki was head of state, he had to make everyone toe the line.
He said: number one, we have to give respect to Africa; number two, we have to give help; we have to have an African renaissance, and he got everyone to toe the line. In foreign affairs, this was clear; in Rwanda, we had peacekeeping forces; in West Africa, we had problems and we had to go to Ivory Coast, to Liberia; he was asked by the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] region to go and talk to Taylor and persuade him to leave. So that period of Mbeki—and I don’t think the new administration is going to change that policy—was to make everyone toe the line. That is why up to now the policy is when people come here, South Africa will not build refugee camps; the policy of South Africa is to let people stay within the communities so that they can share whatever we have. That still stands, and I don’t think it will change. . . . During the era of apartheid, we were isolated; we never linked with anyone. We were just like a frog in a little pond; we never got out. Now we have to learn to live with other people, and you cannot live with other people unless you allow other people to live with you.
(Executive manager, International Relations, Africa Desk, Department of Labour) 21
South Africa’s interests are African interests. The thrust of our foreign policy is to say “a better Africa, a better world.” We cannot be an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty and underdevelopment and insecurity.
That is why our first priority is that we prioritize Africa. Whatever Africa experiences negatively affects us. The first priority is the African agenda.
(Director, Humanitarian Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs) 22 Indeed, post-apartheid South Africa has a constitution that reflects this view, explicitly enshrining the rights of migrants to many of the same fundamental
sets of rights available to citizens. Furthermore, the country has developed a vi-brant civil society and an active human rights community that has consistently litigated on behalf of the rights of migrants (Crisp and Kiragu 2010). The NGO Lawyers for Human Rights, for example, has fought numerous cases on behalf of Zimbabwean migrants, creating a judicial constraint on the restrictive policies that the government can adopt. 23
On the other hand, this ideological and judicial barrier to total exclusion has been counterbalanced by a set of disincentives to expand the rights of Zimba-bweans. With 27 percent unemployment in the country in 2010 and increasing competition for jobs and resources, there has been a shift in public attitudes toward a more communitarian sense of South Africa for South Africans. In the words of one young, white South African: “There is no real future for whites in South Africa. . . . What I am asking for is an equal chance. . . . If there is going to be a revolution in this country, it is going to come from our side. . . . Immigrants compete down wages and so they are resented by the blacks, who are already preventing whites from getting jobs.” 24
Indeed, the massive growth in xenophobia was especially particularly evident in May 2008, when large-scale xenophobic violence was perpetrated by South Af-ricans against immigrants predominantly from other sub-Saharan African states.
More than sixty foreigners were killed and more than 100,000 displaced, con-tributing to a shift in the terms of the immigration debate (Landau and Misago 2009). Against this backdrop, it has been difficult for politicians to argue for an expansion of migrant rights. The regional representative for UNHCR articulated the dilemma faced by the country:
By definition, if you start looking at an issue, you will adopt a more restrictive policy. South Africa is like any other country. It cannot af-ford to let everyone and anyone in. . . . I ask myself if we are playing with fire here. When we look at the xenophobic violence last year, it shows a total disconnect between the way the government sees things and the policies it articulates and the population’s concerns especially in relation to immigration. When it comes to people moving, you can-not ignore it. . . . It poses fundamental questions for the post-’94 South Africa, which was a pro-Africa agenda. They will keep telling you their foreign policy is essentially a pro-Africa policy. There is a little bit of a contradiction there between, on the one hand, saying that, and, on the other hand, controlling immigration. But on the other hand, you still have to deport people. 25
Given these countervailing pressures, it is unsurprising that there was little decisive response by the government and that its approach was characterized by
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ad hoc “muddle through.” The government lacked the leadership or clarity of vision required to make addressing the Zimbabwean influx a major legislative priority in a country in which many other issues, such as housing, public service delivery, unemployment, income inequality, and HIV/AIDS, were competing for political priority (Crisp and Kiragu 2010, 19). Moreover, coherently addressing the issue would have required significant coordination among multiple govern-ment departgovern-ments, including Labour, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Health, Education, and Social Development (Crisp and Kiragu 2010; Polzer 2008, 10).
International
Incentives have pulled in opposite directions at the international level as well, which likewise helps to explain the muddle-through nature of the government’s response. On the one hand, as a liberal democratic state, South Africa has been greatly concerned to maintain its international reputation and be seen as a be-nevolent hegemon in the region. Consequently, it has been sensitive to interna-tional criticism over how it has handled the Zimbabwean exodus, for which it has been subject to widespread condemnation by human rights NGOs (Human Rights Watch 2008, 2009a), international organizations (Médecins Sans Fron-tières 2009; Crisp and Kiragu 2010), academics (Betts and Kaytaz 2009), and the media. Polzer (2008, 16–17) highlights why South Africa has not been able to ignore this criticism: “There has been increasing international media and civil society attention to South Africa’s response to Zimbabweans in the country. The focus has been on abuses which Zimbabweans experience in trying to access the asylum system and during deportation. As with South Africa’s treatment of Afri-can foreigners more generally and the xenophobic attacks in townships through-out Sthrough-outh Africa, this issue is significantly denting Sthrough-outh Africa’s international reputation as a rights-respecting African leader.” It is arguably these reputational concerns that led the government to at least begin to develop some kind of policy framework to address the influx in April 2009.
On the other hand, South Africa’s regional priorities have served as a politi-cal barrier against an inclusive approach toward the Zimbabweans. The South African government has been trying to maintain a strong bilateral relationship with Zimbabwe and to play a regional role in mediating between ZANU-PF and the MDC in the establishment and consolidation of the country’s power-sharing agreement. South Africa’s approach in mediating the SADC-facilitated Global Political Agreement has been characterized by a silent diplomacy that attempts to avoid overt condemnation of Mugabe or the Zimbabwean regime (Vale 2003).
This position has made the South African government reluctant to explicitly identify the Zimbabwean migrants as fleeing a desperate humanitarian or human
rights situation in a manner that might alienate Zimbabwe. In Polzer’s words (2008, 16), “South Africa’s role, as mandated by SADC, in mediating between the Zimbabwean political parties has strongly coloured debates on potential re-sponses towards Zimbabweans in South Africa.”
Furthermore, during the Mbeki regime in particular, the president’s personal relationship with Mugabe placed a strong constraint on the degree to which the country could be seen to be criticizing Mugabe, either directly or through rec-ognizing fleeing Zimbabweans as victims of a failed and human rights–abusing state. For example, at the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria, the office of the Zim-babwean ambassador to South Africa was adorned with photographs of Mugabe and Mbeki embracing each other, and even of the ambassador and Mbeki social-izing together. This camaraderie is characteristic of the unity between the heads of state in the SADC countries who were of the generation that fought liberation struggles against white colonial rule. As Hammar, McGregor, and Landau (2010, 269) put it: “Mbeki’s protracted support for ZANU-PF revealed the importance of solidarity among a cohort of liberation leaders.” Yet even with the election of Jacob Zuma as South African president, little seems to have changed in South Africa’s approach toward Zimbabwe.
To illustrate how the bilateral relationship has served as a constraint on mi-gration policy toward the Zimbabweans, we can turn to April 2009, when South Africa posited its policy reforms. Indeed, before South Africa announced the pro-posal for an immigration exemption permit for all Zimbabweans and the suspen-sion of deportations, it first consulted the Zimbabwean government. According to the senior staff members in the Department of Home Affairs, a meeting was held at Victoria Falls in March 2009 in which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with staff from the Department of Home Affairs, discussed its ideas for suspending deportations with Zimbabwean officials and sought their approval before announcing the changes.