Migration after Apartheid: Deracialising South African Foreign Policy

Literature › Works

Audie Klotz (2000). Migration after Apartheid: Deracialising South African Foreign Policy. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 5. Taylor & Francis.

Type	journal article
Scope	Post-1994 South African economy
Method	theoretical or conceptual
Period studied	1913–2000
Regions	South Africa, Southern Africa (SADC), Mozambique
Themes	transition post apartheid, mining migrant labour, politics ideology elections, origins segregation, demography urbanisation
Citation key	klotz2000

Argument

Klotz argues that post-apartheid immigration policy stays restrictive and enforcement-focused, close to the 1913 and apartheid-era framework. She attributes this to identity politics and a new non-racial xenophobia, not to bureaucratic inertia or a lack of democratic input. Using a constructivist approach, she shows that a 'discourse of threat' inherited from the 'total strategy' era now frames Africans from the rest of the continent as the outsiders. She examines four dimensions: parliament, mass societal pressure, regional dynamics and international pressure. Popular and parliamentary preferences support restriction, so reformers (rights groups, business, think-tanks) need regional and international leverage and transnational allies.

Evidence and method

Parliamentary debates and Home Affairs Portfolio Committee hearings, draft bills (2000 Immigration Bill, 1998 Refugee Act, 1991 and 1995 Aliens Control Acts), newspaper reports, NGO and ILO/SAMAT reports, SAMP/HSRC/IDASA studies, an HRW report, and a few interviews. Secondary literature on identity, sovereignty and security.

Findings

• Segregation-era and apartheid policy confined Africans to temporary migrant-labour entry while recruiting white settlers. (p. 2)

  Throughout the twentieth century, the government actively sought white settlers but strictly limited Africans to no more than temporary legal entry under the migrant labour system.

• Explicit bans on black immigration were lifted only after 1986, to bolster the Bantustans, while policing powers were reinforced. (p. 2)

  Only in an attempt to bolster the Bantustans did the government lift explicit bans on black immigration after 1986, while simultaneously reinforcing state policing powers.

• Apartheid blocked non-white immigration by denying Africans any legal basis for movement except as mine workers. (p. 5)

  The apartheid system forestalled non-white immigration-both by creating an inhospitable environment for Africans and by refusing to grant any legal basis for their movement other than as temporary mine workers

• Central thesis: post-apartheid deracialisation produced a non-racial xenophobia rather than openness to the outside world. (p. 3)

  Rather than embracing the outside world, a deracialised xenophobia now prevails.

• The apartheid state refused to recognise Mozambican refugees, partly as a result of its own regional destabilisation. (p. 9)

  Until 1993, for example, South Africa refused to acknowledge the presence of Mozambicans as refugees fleeing their war-torn country

• The slow dismantling of the formal regional mine contract system pushes neighbouring-state labourers into other routes of migration. (p. 11)

  Similarly, labourers from neighbouring states seek jobs after the slow dismantling of a more-formal regional contract system for the mines.

• South Africa resisted SADC proposals for a regional labour market, preserving its bilateral dominance. (p. 13)

  South Africa firmly resisted such scenarios, and by 1997 SADC proposed a more limited protocol.

• The NUM, representing migrant miners, was an unusually strong advocate of migrant rights, unlike other unions. (p. 13)

  the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in particular has been a strong advocate for the rights of migrant workers (who are their members), including citizenship rights.

• Xenophobia is the main barrier to immigration reform, rather than a deficit of democratic participation. (p. 14)

  The rising tide of xenophobia against the influx of foreigners creates a potent barrier to reforms in immigration policy.