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In what appears tom be a significant statement, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told the employers in his country not to recruit undocumented foreign nationals to avoid recurring tensions. Of late, the local population is very much agitated against employers recruiting migrants. Some of these agitations had erupted into violent demonstrations causing death and heavy loss of properties not very long ago.
The recent remarks of the president has been interpreted differently by political commentators. On the one hand, the wily politician was trying to address the local population, his vote bank. He concedes the challenges of unemployment. Migrant population, who are prepared to work at lesser wage, are preferred by employers, who are constantly on a wage cutting spree. Trade unionism in South Africa is very strong and the negotiated wage settlement after every few years, entail a huge cost for employers. Employing migrant population would mean lesser wage cost, which is also a preferred route for employers, who are facing herculean task to turnaround the enterprises buttressed with continuing slowdown, though the recent data dished by the statistics department are indicative of a marginal pick up in the growth rate and business confidence. a
Admittedly, Ramaphosa is clearly taking steps to become an undisputed leader of the continent –broadly similar to the role played by icons like Nelson Mandela. Traces of jingoism in speech or action can convey a different meaning to countries where the migrants belong to. If one goes by the official estimates, South Africa has only 2.9 million migrants. In percentage terms, it is slightly over 5 percent. But insiders say that it is an underestimate. Some figures may seem to be exaggerated like the one group nursing migrant phobia dishes out. For them the figure would be something close to six million and would increase exponentially. Most immigrants to South Africa are from neighbouring countries. That includes Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. If checks are not put in place and some sort of regulation is not being imposed, alarmists say the situation might go out of control like the one that had happened with the Nigerian migrant workers sometime in 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.
Ramaphosa, therefore, has punctuated his statement carefully to convey the impression that he is a jingoist. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent speech at Koster in the North West during the official commemoration of Human Rights Day is punctuated with reflections of conciliation and diplomacy. Sample this. “The challenges of unemployment that we are facing should never mean that we should go and wage war against those people from other countries because once we do that, we just immediately promote this spirit of xenophobia that now we hate them, that they must go. What we are saying is that yes, we want people to be properly documented in our country, we want employers to be very careful to hire people who are properly documented.”. His remarks are cleverly crafted and diplomatically executed.
Indeed, all that is being experienced by the country is not soothing for the migrant workers. Residents in Alexandra embarked on the so-called Dudula campaign protest action group targeting undocumented foreign nationals in the township. Ramaphosa condemned the movement and described it as against South Africa’s values and warned that such actions could lead to vigilantism.
What does it mean to the wily president? In clear terms, it signifies the multiple challenges that the president has to put up with. Foremost challenge is the lack of or slow recovery of the economy, which was on a limping trail from 2008 ever since the meltdown blues gobbled up the financial world. Faced with a double recession and slowest pace of growth in its entire economic history, the President has a huge economic conundrum staring at him. Coupled with the eroding image and delicate stand it has been taking in the case of Russian-Ukraine conflict, initially supporting the Ukraine rights and later changing the stand to support erstwhile friendly Russia, many feel it is a change of 360 degrees. He can take solace under the dictum that diplomacy is not often influenced by rationality but expediency.
