After 11th-hour delays and last-minute crisis talks South Africa is finally set to get its new Immigration Bill – a political compromise that has left the Minister of Home Affairs, the Inkatha Freedom Party, Business South Africa and others dissatisfied.
Minister of Home Affairs and Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is known to be unhappy about the final result and is likely to make his displeasure known during the debate and vote in the National Assembly on Friday.
But the party is not expected to vote against it. ”In terms of the clauses we oppose, you are going to get us on the podium,” said IFP MP Prince Zulu at the end of Wednesday night’s eight-hour horse-trading session, during which the Bill was approved by the home affairs committee.
Other political parties are also expected to come out in favour of the new legislation. Despite reservations, the prevailing sentiment appears to be that the Bill is better than nothing. And privately MPs say the current draft legislation – the result of high-level political negotiations between the IFP and the African National Congress over the weekend – is an improvement on what was initially tabled in Parliament in June 2001.
The Immigration Bill has been at the centre of a tug-of-war between the ANC and IFP. The law’s aim is to ease the recruitment of foreign skilled workers to redress South Africa’s crucial skills shortage – an aim announced by President Thabo Mbeki during his state of the nation address in 2000.
Political conflict came to a head last week when ANC MPs tabled a substantial rewrite of the Bill. Last Thursday’s scheduled committee vote was cancelled and high-level crisis talks between the parties got under way. Although broad consensus was reached on the Bill, disagreement remained over details.
As the Bill was adopted clause by clause by consensus on Wednesday night, it came down to just three normal votes – carried by the numerical strength of the ANC MPs, plus the New National Party member. These were on the work permit clause, which includes a controversial quota provision; the removal of the departmental restructuring provisions from the Bill; and the deletion of the progressively punitive fines and jail penalties for offences, in favour of the more traditional phrasing of ”maximum fine and/or jail terms”.
But the amendments sparked concern in Business South Africa, which represents big business. ”Business cannot condone this process and expresses its extreme concern that we may be faced with an Immigration Act in the near future whose precise nature and import has never been considered by important stakeholders,” it said in a fax to home affairs committee chairperson Mpho Scott on Wednesday.
Despite some objections by the home affairs department – particularly over the quota system – senior officials say the Bill can be implemented. There was a collective sigh of relief after Parliament’s home affairs committee finally approved the long-delayed Bill late on Wednesday night.
Parliament also came under pressure. It had to meet Constitutional Court deadlines of early June for remedying several unconstitutional sections of the current Aliens Control Act, or face contempt of court.
Former chairperson Aubrey Mokoena, redeployed to the back benches last month, was accused of stalling the Bill. All stops were pulled out to get the Bill approved despite three postponements of the committee’s vote in a week.
The weekend talks between the ANC and IFP followed a sweeping rewrite by ANC MPs uncomfortable with the Bill drafted by home affairs and approved by the Cabinet last year.
In the resulting agreement, the immigration courts the ANC rejected have been included, while it has relented on demands for border control to be policed by the defence force rather than home affairs.
The proposed restructuring of the department has been excluded, but diplomatic and treaty permits are back in. And various business-related permits, which had been conflated into one in the alternative ANC Bill, have again been separated into business, corporate and work permits, which now involve a quota system.
Speculation that all was not well surfaced quickly as the IFP delegation did not attend the joint announcement. The IFP home affairs committee members were also late for the committee meeting. It is understood that there was broad agreement between the parties but disagreement on detail, which was raised in party ranks shortly before Wednesday’s scheduled meetings.
Scott told fellow MPs the delay was because the IFP was holding discussions with home affairs officials.
But when the home affairs committee got down to business, the tone of proceedings gave little away of the drama of previous days. A ”the” and an ”on” were inserted and there was some haggling about whether some words should remain in italics.
The National Assembly waived its three-day waiting period between committee vote and chamber debate to process the Bill. It will be voted on by the National Council of Provinces’ home affairs committee next Wednesday and debated in the council shortly thereafter.