Refugee camps can be dangerous, expensive and degrading. Is this how South Africans want to treat their fleeing Zimbabwean neighbours?
The Mail & Guardian (“SA’s Zim exodus plan”, August 10) reported that the government may update a 2002 plan to help structure its response to Zimbabweans entering South Africa.
That plan included a “reception centre” near the Beit Bridge border post that could house a mass influx of refugees fleeing violence tied to that year’s national elections. Clearly, South Africa must do something now to help those in need, both South African and Zimbabwean, but questions remain over whether this is an appropriate and ethical strategy for the current asylum seekers and migrants.
In 2002 Wits University issued a report assessing the plan and many of our concerns remain valid today. As we move forward, we must keep the following questions in mind.
First, and most crucially, who does this plan intend to help? The DA has demanded the establishment of a camp for Zimbabwean refugees, implicitly suggesting that all ZimbabÂweans are refugees. While many of them are asylum seekers — more than 20Â 000 Zimbabweans have applied for asylum in the past 18 months — many are labour migrants, while others are simply shopping to help their hungry families back home.
Should all of these people be held indefinitely near the border? And how likely is it that everyone will report to a border official if it means being immediately locked up? And what of the Zimbabweans already in the country? Would they be rounded up and trucked out to Limpopo, making the “reception centre” just a more isolated and long-term version of the Lindela repatriation centre?
In fact, would this plan replace or coexist with the government’s current dominant response to Zimbabwean immigration, which is to deport thousands every month?
Second, what is the legal and institutional basis for the plan? Is it based on the Disaster Management Act of 2002, on the 1998 Refugees Act or on the 2002 Immigration Act? This has implications for which agency takes the lead and how the plan is funded.
Disaster management is largely the responsibility of local government with national funding. But this can be released only once an emergency has been declared, something that is unlikely to happen. If the “reception centre” is established under the Refugees Act, then the agency responsible is home affairs, the capacity constraints of which are all too well known.
Would management of the “centre” be outsourced, like that of Lindela? And what are the roles of the South African Police Service and South African National Defence Force?
The DA calls for the involvement of international agencies and NGOs, which are unlikely to allocate their scarce resources to a medium-income country such as South Africa, which usually likes to emphasise its independence from international aid.
If this plan is not done within the law, the government will open itself up to international scorn and legal action, much as it has done with Lindela.
Third, what is our exit plan? The original 2002 scenario was to provide assistance to 1Â 000 people for three days at a single “reception centre”. Any plan now would need to consider the possibility of long-term unrest in Zimbabwe, respond holistically to the wide range of people coming into and already in the country and have a national reach.
If the centre is intended only to hold people until their legal status can be determined, we should keep in mind the years asylum seekers now wait to get refugee status. Unless South Africa wants to maintain expensive camps on a permanent basis, wouldn’t we be better off finding ways to strengthen our crisis and emergency response services throughout the country and help Zimbabweans gain access to these? In the long run such added capacity will help South Africans if they, too, are ever in need.
Finally, given due consideration of all these questions, is a reception centre or camp really the best way for South Africa to respond to Zimbabweans within our borders?
Tara Polzer is a researcher with the forced migration studies programme at the University of the WitwatersÂrand. In 2002 she co-authored the report, Emergency Preparedness in South Africa: 24 Lessons from the Zimbabwean Elections. It is available online at http://migration.wits.ac.za