- by Petrus Umlimi
- The Guardian
- Issue #2196
Recently there have been demonstrations in South Africa calling for forcible repatriation of illegal migrants, as well as widely reported attacks on migrants from Malawi and Mozambique.
After a recent address by President Cyril Ramaphosa on migration and illegal immigration, the South African Communist Party (SACP) has made a clear statement on the issue.
While the SACP supports a controlled migration program, it has stated that “the deeper roots of the crisis lie in unemployment, poverty, inequality, uneven development, deindustrialisation, weak local production, poor spatial planning, criminality, corruption and the continued domination of the economy by monopoly capital.” Accordingly, the SACP argues that the real problem of South Africa is not the presence of migrants, but capitalist exploitation of vulnerable labour, whether South African or foreign.
The SACP connects migration pressures to “war, poverty, underdevelopment, imperialist extraction, climate stress and uneven development.” The party is calling on the South African government to work with the Southern African Development Community, a regional economic alliance of 16 African member states, as well as with the African Union and neighbouring countries to address the causes of forced migration.
The real enemy, the SACP says, is “ the employer who exploits undocumented labour, the corrupt official who sells documents, the criminal syndicate that profits from desperation, and the capitalist system that produces unemployment and poverty.”
