It is a myth that South Africa is being flooded by refugees and economic migrants, the South African Human Rights Commission heard on Wednesday.
”There are more people coming to South Africa, but the highest estimate [of refugees and asylum seekers] puts the number at 150 000 out of a population of 44-million,” said Loren Landau, research director of the University of the Witwatersrand’s forced migration project.
He said people should be wary of accepting claims that two to three million people are coming from Zimbabwe.
”It is simply implausible. That would be more than 20% of the population of Zimbabwe, and it is unlikely that so many people would be displaced to South Africa.”
He was testifying at the commission’s hearings on xenophobia, run with Parliament’s committees on home and foreign affairs.
He said other myths are that non-nationals are needy, strain public-service resources and are an economic threat.
Research has shown that non-nationals are in fact contributing to the economy and even employing South Africans for their language skills and knowledge of local business.
He said anyone with the most modest of resources can cross the border, but this opens them to abuse.
Some non-nationals complain that the police see them as ”walking ATMs [automatic teller machines]”.
He recommended that South Africa reconsider its citizenship and residency laws, as the European Union has done, taking into account that many people spend their working lives in another country.
He later said regional integration is an important factor in the success of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the reconstruction blue print for the continent.
Earlier, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that from January this year there were 26 900 recognised refugees and 90 600 awaiting determination of their asylum applications.
Eighty percent were single males. It is not known how many undocumented economic migrants there are in the country. — Sapa