A home affairs official has come under fire for comments made about foreigners. Ann Eveleth reports
Human rights groups working to protect refugee rights this week sharply criticised a senior Department of Home Affairs official for misrepresenting refugee law and dismissing the growing problem of xenophobia in a public speech.
Director of residence Michael Tshlamalang wields enormous power over the fate of refugees and other foreigners, as he presides over the sub- directorates of refugee affairs, temporary residence and permanent residence.
As a senior department official, he may also be in line for promotion when the department moves towards restructuring in the aftermath of the corruption saga which led to the sacking of former director general Albert Mokoena.
Tshlamalang – a former exile – told refugees attending Africa Refugee Day celebrations in Yeoville in June that South Africa’s “very, very liberal” application of its international obligation to accept refugees would soon be tempered by the new Refugee Act; that xenophobia is over- reported by the media and usually amounts to little more than common crime; and that “it is not an insult to be called amakwerekwere [foreigners]”.
The comments do not appear in the official version of Tshlamalang’s speech, which was vetted by his superiors. But the Mail & Guardian obtained a videotape of the celebrations, which reveals that Tshlamalang diverted from his speech several times.
Human Rights Commissioner Jody Kollapen and Lawyers for Human Rights Refugee Rights project head Jacob van Garderen this week sharply criticised Tshlamalang’s comments. Kollapen said they were a cause for “serious concern”.
He said the comments were “inappropriate” in the context of Africa Refugee Day, the purpose of which was “to show solidarity and to commit ourselves to our national and international obligations to refugees”.
Van Garderen said the comments were “an embarrassment”, and added that “officials need to be held responsible for what they say”.
Tshlamalang warned refugees that when the new Refugee Act came into effect later this year, it would mean that: “If you flee from whatever country and you run to Germany and then you come to South Africa and you could have asked for asylum in Germany . If you come from anywhere else and you landed in Nairobi or Gaborone and you come to this country, I’m going to say, ‘No, you landed in Botswana and you are not fleeing anything in Botswana and you could have asked for asylum in Botswana.'”
Kollapen said this was not a correct representation of the Refugee Act.
Tshlamalang’s boss, chief director of migration Patrick Matlou, defended the statement, saying that although it was incorrectly drawn from the Refugee Act, it was “in line with the policy of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees [UNHCR]”. The UNHCR declined to comment on the matter.
But refugee organisations say Tshlamalang’s utterances do not reflect UN policy. The UNHCR policy is defined by a decision of its executive committee dealing with the question of “irregular movement”. This is defined as someone who has registered as an asylum seeker in one country and then moves to another country. While such a person can be sent back to their first country of refuge, a refugee’s place of asylum is otherwise considered to be the first country in which they register as such.
Van Garderen said if South Africa wanted to make an exception to this, it would have to prove that it had agreements in place with other African countries to ensure that they would not send the refugees back to the country they had fled.
“I don’t think that is possible, and it is unfair of South Africa to employ such a policy because it isolates us from asylum-seekers and flies in the face of the notion of responsibility-sharing for refugees. South Africa cannot build walls around its borders and keep refugees out,” he said.
Kollapen said Tshlamalang had also “tried to justify the term amakwerekwere. And he tried to suggest that we are all equally vulnerable to crime and to play down the fact that there have been incidents of xenophobic violence.”
Tshlamalang told the gathering: “Somebody spoke about xenophobia . Me and half these South Africans are at risk daily. I may come back home and find my house has been ransacked and my wife and children have been raped and killed, my car taken, my stereo, everything. If it happens to a foreigner, the front page of a newspaper is going to say xenophobia. I’m a statistic. If you hijack Mr [UNHCR regional representative Kubede] Mangesha right now, it will be xenophobia.”
Matlou said there were no statistics to support claims of widespread xenophobic violence, and that Tshlamalang was merely “putting xenophobia in context”.
Van Garderen said it was “ridiculous” to deny that xenophobic violence exists. “Too many people have died for it to be coincidence,” he said.
Joyce Tlou, assistant co-ordinator of the Lawyers for Human Rights Refugee Rights Project, also disputed Tshlamalang’s defence of the term amakwerekwere. Tshlamalang claimed this was merely the name of a Shona clan that had been generalised to refer to all foreigners.
Tlou, a Zimbabwean, said: “There is no Shona clan with this name. There is a clan named Makorakora, but it is not a derogatory name, so to suggest that this has been generalised to refer to foreigners is absurd.”
Kollapen said efforts to trace the origins of the term did little to address the derogatory context in which it is now used. “Kaffir also had a different meaning to how it is used today, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that it is now a racist term.”
Tshlamalang was unavailable for comment.