Chairperson, Madam Minister, President Zuma stated in 2010 that government officials "must do things differently". This is both a realisation and an outcry that public service in South Africa needs an urgent overhaul. It is 2011, and we are still a long way from attaining this excellent public service culture.
With the allocated budget for the 2011-12 financial year, the Department of Home Affairs will have to cover all bases, including among other things, job creation, improving service delivery, continuing the fight against corruption, the upcoming local government elections, and international assistance in the democracy and elections in various countries. This is a tall order for a department faced with many internal and external challenges with a limited budget.
Firstly, South Africa's skilled migration regime is poorly conceived and ineffective. The range on skills that are needed in South Africa are greatly underestimated. Until October 2010, the department had 350 000 Zimbabweans on record who were legally in South Africa, but the International Organisation for Migration estimates that there were between 1,5 million and 2 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa. The department is, in effect, faced with a paralysing dilemma. On the one hand, it wants to attract skills and act humanely, but, on the other hand, it does not trust business to identify its own needs for imported talent. It is desperate to control the influx of poor foreigners that it sees as threatening social stability and alienating the support base of the governing party. This can best be described as one of the effects of lacking a coherent migration policy.
The Immigration Amendment Bill that was passed in the House is yet another illustrious demonstration of the lack of clear policy in the area of migration. Cope maintained that this Bill was in fact ...