`Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the inscription on the Statue of Liberty urges the world.
In South Africa, which we pride as a “land of liberty”, we electrocute them, detain them, deport them and, on occasion, lynch them. Even when they are not poor and huddled we seem to have a compulsive need to keep our country free of would-be immigrants, as in the vexed case of the award-winning Zimbabwe journalist, Newton Kanhema.
Kanhema’s employers, the Independent Group, have fought an admirable battle to keep their star reporter in South Africa. It was rewarded to a degree this week when the Department of Home Affairs informed Kanhema that they were withdrawing the deportation orders against him and his wife, Jean, after a high court judge had discovered a number of technical defects in the documentation.
But the department added that this would not end their efforts to have him thrown out of the country.
It is difficult to understand the government’s single-minded approach to Kanhema’s case. It might be argued that the issue is one of principle, that “if we allow Kanhema to stay it will set a precedent and open the floodgates”.
But the African National Congress-led government has granted amnesties to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants since coming to power, so the principle does not stand.
Kanhema has been accused of misrepresenting himself to the department. In some application forms, it seems, he did not own up to a wife. He was married by customary rights in Zimbabwe and, as we have still not defined the status of such marriages in the eyes of the law, we can hardly penalise him for his uncertainty as to whether immigration officials would regard him as married.
He is said to have covered up a criminal conviction in Zimbabwe. The case is still subject to appeal; it involves a nominal fine for “common assault”; there are allegations he was set up on the charge; and when one considers that the likes of Sicilian businessman Vito Palazzolo – a Mafia banker who is a fugitive from justice in Europe – have been granted residence in South Africa the objection seems thin to say the least.
Finally, and most seriously in the government’s eyes, Kanhema claimed to have been permanently resident in South Africa for a requisite five-year period when he in fact spent some six months of it in Zimbabwe.
Again the circumstances of his absence are subject to some dispute – it seems he was still working for a South African employer during this period. But five years is anyway an arbitrary figure, a rough means of identifying those foreigners who are already integrated into South African society, which is clearly the instance in Kanhema’s case. The charge smacks more of an excuse than a reason.
Kanhema’s supporters charge that the real motivation for his threatened deportation is government hostility towards him as a reporter – that it is a transparent attempt to gag the media. In this respect Kanhema’s case against the state would seem to be considerably stronger than the state’s case against Kanhema.
Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s office has made a number of admissions which clearly indicate personal hostility towards Kanhema. By some accounts Mbeki has gone so far as to describe him as a “troublemaker” and added “we don’t need him here”.
Mbeki has denied this. But he has admitted telling the journalist that he was too supportive of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and accusing him of being a Zimbabwean meddling in South African politics.
The presidential representative, Joel Netshitenzhe, has confirmed having “questioned the advisability” of a foreigner holding a post as a senior political writer, at a meeting with executives from the Independent Group. Even if these remarks have been misinterpreted, they create the impression of political prejudice and, in circumstances such as these, impressions tend to be all-important.
We would urge the government to recognise that, just as one swallow does not make a summer, so one hostile journalist does not make a hostile press. But the victimisation of that one journalist could have that effect.
Kanhema – the recent winner of the prestigious CNN award for journalism – is a newspaperman of talent whom most of us in the profession are proud to count as a colleague. If he is allowed to settle here it will be our gain and Zimbabwe’s loss.
“Have we not got anything better to do with our resources?” demanded Judge Guy Hoffman, during last week’s court hearing, of the government’s pursuit of Kanhema.
The answer is, yes we do. We can welcome Newton Kanhema to our country and thereby make the point to the world that South Africa is one country where the press can – in the words of that inscription on the Statue of Liberty – “breathe free”.