ActionSA Leader Herman Mashaba leads the party's activists as they picket in front of the Department of Home Affairs Head quarters in Pretoria to make to make a submission on the white paper on Citizenship, Immigration and refugee protection. Picture: Oupa Mokoena / Independent Newspapers
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba says incidents such as the Phala-Phala scandal at the farm owned by the president of the country, were fuelling crime and illegal immigration in the country.
Mashaba who wants a crackdown on illegal migrants, said international criminals were encouraged and saw South Africa as their playground because of the criminal behaviour of some of our leaders.
“People must come here legally and when they are here must respect our laws, those who are here and do not respect them we must not be apologetic, we must send them back to their countries. We want to ensure that when people bring money to our country, they must do that through the right channels.
“We respect the Reserve Bank but we have a problem with how the Reserve Bank has dealt with the Phala Phala issue. We are not fools as South Africans to accept this thing of the President Cyril Ramaphosa not having anything to do with the Phala Phala,” the ActionSA leader added.
Mashaba was speaking at the headquarters of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) on Tuesday in Pretoria, where his party was delivering a memorandum on the white paper on citizenship.
Mashaba said his party had always maintained that the country was built on the back of migrants, adding that people from other countries were welcomed but only if they did it legally.
“As a party that values the rule of law, ActionSA has long called for stronger measures to be taken to secure our borders while streamlining the visa processing system for tourist and skilled work seekers among others.”
He questioned the department of home affairs competency in handling complex policy overhauls given its history of corruption and mismanagement.
Mashaba said the white paper would not address the decay of the DHA, adding that the institution needed to be fixed first.
“The White Paper is vague and lacks practical implementation detail. While we acknowledge this is only the first step, it is concerning that this is the best the DHA could do after four years of consultation. The White Paper also deflects accountability for government failures in managing public institutions.”
Accepting the memorandum, the department CFO Gordon Hollamby said before changing the immigration policy, the department would consider all the submissions it has received and present them to the parliamentary session.
Hollamby said as the department, they were doing everything possible to make sure that the lawlessness that was alleged was addressed.
“We have established law enforcement authority and it has been successful, from my perspective allegations like this would be prone as it is election time,” said the CFO.
Hollamby acknowledged that there were illegal migrants in the country, saying that as the department they needed to tie up the legislation to be able to deal with the problem.
He added that there were many genuine asylum seekers in the country but acknowledged that there were those who were not genuine who had to routed out.
The Star
Sipho Jack
sipho.jack@inl.co.za