Address by the Minister of Home Affairs, Naledi Pandor MP, at Graduate School of Business, Wits Business School, Johannesburg, 18 September 2013 Managing Transitions In this month of September we mark two significant events that have shaped our history and who we seek to be today and tomorrow. These events illustrate each year the ecstasy and the agony of a society seeking to manage a complex transition that defies the best analytical efforts of the brightest in our midst. Despite the acknowledged complexity of our evolution (or revolution) many of us insist that actually the true solution to our full transition lies in the hand of a political party, a government institution, a university, or indeed a vice chancellor. I hold the view that if we are to succeed in managing our transition each of us has to play an impactful role. We must have unity of purpose in committing to effect change, but that unity must be linked to practical action. The two events referred to earlier are the life and death of Steve Biko and the celebration of Heritage month. I refer to Steve Biko as an example to draw on due to his ideas and the courageous manner in which he pursued them. Biko believed all of us are one humanity and that we needed to pursue national programmes with a conviction that showed we understood that we have one shared destiny the pursuit of the good, for all. 1
Biko acknowledged in stark fashion that our sense of self was deeply impacted upon by our experience of the social engineering that was apartheid. He recognized that the success of such social engineering is a psychological imprisonment that causes feelings of inadequacy, poor ambition and dependency. A sort of corruption of the soul. The man we remember this month offered a liberation of the soul by being unafraid to act, to challenge and engage. He placed belief in self at the centre of social action, thus rejecting notions of inherent superiority and inherent inferiority. The second event is Heritage month. A month in which we are encouraged to celebrate our identity, or culture, the received wisdom of our traditions. I have noted with interest the searching articles in the past two editions of City Press and other media. Various individuals have sought to define who they believe they are in terms of nationality, religion, gender and for some, ethnicity. Challenges have been posed to the concept South African and its meaning. These are fascinating debates. The challenge is to move them into a sphere in which they help to alter our apartheid notions of self into a shared identity which allows for the self expression Biko and other leaders fought for mixed with a practical social commitment to transforming our society. As a servant in the department of Home Affairs, I have become acutely aware of how the characteristics 2
associated with these two events continue to shape our department and society. The WITS Business school has become our partner in setting in place a new, truly effective, efficient and responsive department. The turn-around strategy which is the framework programme for transforming home affairs addresses societal challenges that shaped the life and thoughts of our great leaders. I have referred to awareness of self in a positive manner, several of our objectives are relevant in this regard. Firstly, we are working to create for the first time in South Africa an inclusive reliable and secure National Population Register. As you are aware South Africa has never had a population register that includes all its citizens. And although we have made significant strides, each year we only register around 54% of all children born in South Africa. The reasons for this inadequate registration are many. Millions of South Africans have not internalized registration of birth as a core element of nation formation. Also, tradition has proven to be barrier. Registration or acquiring a birth certificate requires names, some communities are reluctant to name at birth and find our pressure to register culturally offensive. This resistance and at times our own administrative failures have led to significant identity theft and a vulnerable population register. 3
Our turnaround strategy and work with institutions such as this school have led to the development of innovative approaches that seek to reach communities where they live and to use community leaders to secure the support of parents and all community members in population registration. We are working hard to ensure all children are registered and every household appreciates the importance of a National Population Register. In addition to registration and other civic matters, we are also working on developing our human resources to ensure they can execute our mandates effectively. We have found that our challenge is not always the skill to do the job, but the requirement that it is done with integrity. One of the significant challenges of our department is corruption. Our documents provide access to services in a wide range of institutions. This importance of IDs, visas, passports etc. has not always instilled pride in our workers, rather it has opened the door to bribery and corruption for many. The department has adopted a zero tolerance approach to corruption. It has a counter-corruption unit and does arrest corrupt officials and ensure they face criminal charges. Our dilemma, however is how do we build the ethics of integrity and honesty in all our officials. How do we infuse a new consciousness of service and commitment that does not need a big brother anticorruption unit? 4
I believe this moral dilemma is one all of us must confront as a nation. Just as Biko abhorred racism and inequality so should we hate dishonesty and greed. Our responsibilities as Home Affairs go beyond our domestic setting and include responsibility for immigration management. We believe immigration has many opportunities for South Africa. We could attract scarce skills, while training our citizens in scarce skills. We can encourage investments into South Africa and develop links with our continent that allow for people exchanges that will build a new attitude to our continent and our Africanness. South Africa has worked hard to develop links with other countries on the continent, but as with citizens of the North, we tend to define ourselves as somewhat distinct, somewhat separate from our fellow Africans. We find this attitude even in our department. It is an attitude we are striving hard to overcome. Our efforts are directed at providing reliable and improved support to foreign nationals and to asylum seekers who apply for refugee status in South Africa. In order to ensure we are fully responsive, we are reflecting on the future development of immigration policies that are far more relevant to the issues confronting us to-day. Firstly, we propose that the reality of SADC economic migrants should be acknowledged through developing permits that will allow temporary work visas to be issued 5
to economic migrants who currently use the asylum seeking route as the only means of acquiring legal status. Second, we want to strengthen measures to attract scarce skills professionals by creating work visas for graduates who are foreign students in South Africa. Third, we plan to pay greater attention to skilled asylum seekers by developing a skills register and assisting refugees to find work opportunities in South Africa. Fourth, South Africa is set to become a popular destination for researchers in a number of disciplines. We want to join other research friendly countries by easing access of researchers into South Africa. Our work on a turnaround strategy has convinced us that is possible for South Africa to compete in the global migration space. Working with the Business school we have begun to develop a cohort of staff that is committed to transforming South Africa and our department. I do recognize that our plans require at minimum SADC co-operation if we are to succeed. I am hopeful that our neighboring countries will assist us by co-operating in ensuring orderly and legal migration from their countries into South Africa. Many people tend to have a negative view of migration and its management in South Africa. They do not see as we do that thousands of investors are keen to establish businesses in South Africa. They do not acknowledge the positive impact of equality on tourism. South Africa is a 6
choice destination for civil marriages and for general tourism. We know that we have a lot of work to do to change the attitude of citizens to foreign nationals from other countries in Africa. The department has begun an outreach campaign to build communities of diversity and peace. We are very concerned at the attacks against African Foreign nationals and plan to work with communities to build links among community members and common purpose in fighting the criminal attacks against foreigners. Our planned interventions, policy changes as well as the ongoing work with this Business school can build a new transformed Home Affairs better able to manage the transition to a different and more humane South Africa. Steve Biko would almost certainly remind us that the challenges do not end with our transition. As part of Africa we have a role to play in developing the processes of national registration that we have initiated in South Africa throughout Africa. Already with the support of the AU we are working to ensure universal civic registration on the continent. We plan to work together to develop National Population Registers in all our countries and to use these as the basis for future census and for national planning. I am sure that when you think of Steve Biko and of Heritage Day you never associate them with the ideal of a responsive efficient honest public service for all nor the 7
importance of a National Population Register that secures your identity. I hope after this brief lecture on my perspective on these matters you will join my very basic national campaign to ensure no-one is left out and that all of us wherever we are appear on a population register our nation can be proud of. We are a nation in the throes of a challenging transition to a shared nationhood in which our diversity is the foundation for unity of purpose and shared practical action. I believe our debates are wonderful but they must lead us somewhere and support our enterprise of concretising our effort to build a non-racial, non-sexist united democratic society in which each of us has the means and opportunity to make a contribution. If we use our spaces in this meaningful way I think we could build a truly new society. Thank you 8