INTRODUCTION

Moving towards the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world is witnessing a migration crisis of global proportions. Every year, millions of people are leaving their homes, crossing national boundaries out of fear for violence, discrimination or simply seeking employment. How does the State in the 1990s deal with these movements, and what are the consequences? As the world moves into a period of unprecedented international labour mobility, the question arises whether it will still be possible for states to exercise control over their populations and to achieve control over their territory? Questions like these clearly prompt the rethinking of realist notions of 'state' and 'sovereignty'. This corresponds with the view that there is a crisis regarding the immigration policies of many countries.

Castles and Miller have argued that "international migration has never been as pervasive, or as socio-economically and politically significant, as it is today. Never before has international migration seemed so pertinent to national security and so connected to conflict and disorder on a global scale."1 This article deals partially with the changing security concerns that states face in the 1990s and the particular problems that a state undergoing major transformations (in this case South Africa) has to deal with.

With the beginning of the 'new' and 'democratic' South Africa, forced migration has assumed new dimensions and enormous political proportions. Surrounding the issues and problems of migration and refugees, are several important questions which should be discussed.

How does this phenomenon fit into newly emerging concepts of security?



What theoretical framework is appropriate to the situation in South Africa right now, and how has the State responded to these challenges?



What problems have been experienced in assessing the context of the migrants/ refugees within the South African scenario vis-à-vis the previous questions?

CONCEPTUALISING SECURITY

A large portion of the literature on the concept of security was developed within the historical context of post-1945 Europe. Much of the writing therefore occured within a specific time frame – that of the Cold War. This meant that, when discussing security, we often deal with an underdeveloped concept as a useful theoretical tool, but an overdeveloped one as a description of the Cold War, its effects and implications in the context of a bipolar world.2 The realist school of international relations, for instance, approached security in terms of power that allowed us to analyse capabilities and motives.3 On the other hand, the idealists viewed security through the lens of peace – claiming a more holistic view of the subject, in comparison to the alleged fragmented picture that realists posited.

With new theoretical developments and practical concerns in the 1990s both realist and idealist versions were forced to broaden the debate. Security was increasingly emphasised as the common element in international relations as a result of new global perspectives, rather than outmoded traditional and limited views of military security, revolving around aspects of national security and territorial borders.

In this sense research on security, think-tanks and analysts all share a common difficulty in the post-Cold War period, the problem of "shooting at a moving target", according to Michael Howard.4

TOWARDS NEW IMAGES OF SECURITY

Images of security require redefinition. In terms of national and supra-national levels (the so-called vertical extension of security), these appear to revolve around problems of ethnic and racial tension, immigrants, refugees and issues that have previously been considered in the category of lower level politics and domestic agendas rather than transnational security issues.5

Barry Buzan, for instance, has speculated on the nature of some of the new patterns of global security, several of which have come to be increasingly important to the South African agenda. These include a great clash around identity and culture, and the "threats and vulnerabilities that affect patterns of communal identity and culture."6 It represented issues, such as migration, religion, and identity, and more specifically the notion of boundaries and where they were drawn.

Another version of this redefinition of security involves the support of democratic reforms, which becomes crucial to an understanding of South Africa in transition. If we regard the relationship of the State to 'security', it can be argued that there have been several changes and consequences for South Africa. States in an interdependent world have found it increasingly difficult to deal with transnational security threats in a national context (i.e., drug problems, AIDS, crime, terrorism, immigration, the problem of pollution and the environment, etc.). These are problems that cut across state borders and as such have particular relevance where the State is facing the pressures of globalisation. Whereas security has been seen in the light of relationships between states involving alliances, sovereignty, deterrence, and others, it is now being extended to include areas such as threats to the domestic economy and society-state relationships.

SECURITY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND FORCED MIGRATION

The South African general elections of 1994 brought a new era of democratic reforms and elevated concerns for human rights and placed these on the forefront of policy agendas. Human rights, forced migration and security concerns are intimately linked. Many immediate causes of flight in the post-Cold War period can be found in gross and individual human rights violations. Greater recognition of asylum seekers and refugees is a natural extension of this human rights culture. Internal displacement and mass exodus often result from gross violations of human rights. Host states should therefore consider the conditions in the states of origin when implementing repatriation programmes.

The 'right to remain' is enshrined in international law and encapsulated by Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that argues that no one shall be subject to arbitrary exile: a particularly important and resounding position in a world characterised by ethnic cleansing and expulsion. Central to the definition of who a refugee is, is an interpretation of what constitutes 'political events'. It is often extremely difficult to separate events that are political from those that are not. As Tsamenyi argues: "After all, practically all government actions may be considered political."7 Thus, any persecution at the hands of a government or tolerated by a government, is inherently political. There is, for example, wide consensus that the racist refugee practices of the apartheid regime have constituted a series of political events. Their maintenance would amount to implicit acceptance of these views.8

Definitions of migrants are also highly contested. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) definition has clear political connotations that distinguish it from definitions of the migrant that is supposed to connote an economic motive. It is generally left to the State in practice to interpret the international refugee regime.9 In dismissing their obligations to receive refugees, some countries argue that many people left their homeland for economic rather than political reasons. To Kuntz, refugees are different from voluntary migrants in that they have to leave their homeland against their will, with no positive motivation to settle anywhere else.10 Implicit in this notion is that they have been `forced out'. The cause of refugee movement is an oft-cited one in terms of the definition of refugees and migrants and one that has widespread applications in everyday use. As Olson notes: "Refugees differ from other spontaneous or sponsored migrants, largely in the circumstances of their movement out of one area to another, and the effects these have on them in the settlement and adjustment phases of their relocation. Refugees are forced to leave their homes because of a change in their environment which makes it impossible to continue life as they have known it. They are coerced by an external force to leave their homes and go elsewhere."11

This definition is a useful one because it recognises the involuntary, forced nature of the move, in addition, the degree of powerlessness among the movers over the decision to move and, in turn, the final destination.

THE MIGRATION THREAT: PROBLEMS AND RESPONSES

By mid-1994, officials estimated that illegal immigrants were entering South Africa at the rate of one every ten minutes, forming between five and eight per cent of the population. There are several problems related to the state/ immigrant situation that appears to have developed into a crisis. The threat that transient migrants pose for the new South African economy, struggling to compete at the global level, appears to be a real one.

One problem is statistics: there is simply no clarity on how many illegal immigrants are inside the country, but estimates range from anywhere between two and eight million (the latter was a police estimate quoted in the press in 1994). The Department of Home Affairs estimate is about three million, a fairly conservative and speculative figure. This also excludes the roughly 170 000 contract migrant workers (people working in mines) and another 100 000 employed in agriculture. There are also about 300 000 Mozambicans who have been accorded some kind of refugee status. Their status is unsure because it is not clear what it means to be a refugee and then be without any hope of asylum, treated like an illegal immigrant and to a large extent forcibly deported. This situation follows an agreement between South Africa and the UNHCR in 1993. The problem is compounded by the fact that many of these migrants have entered South Africa illegally and their presence is therefore clandestine and undocumented. Moreover, many of those that are found and deported, subsequently re-enter the country. The only real data in these terms are those of the 'illegals' who have been recorded because they have been arrested and forcibly repatriated, after entering the country on temporary permits. Their departures were however not recorded when their visas expired, or they were once registered as refugees. It does not give any information about immigrants that have never been recorded.

The important point in terms of definitional context, is that the distinction between illegal immigrants, as classified by Government, and refugees (applying mainly to Mozambicans) is spurious. Mozambicans in rural areas have previously largely been classified as refugees by the former apartheid homeland governments. Mozambicans in urban areas are identified as illegal aliens and different policies – voluntary repatriation from rural areas and forcible deportation from urban ones – have tended to reinforce this divide. Such distinctions are problematic, because the classification of these groups is completely arbitrary. Many of these illegals arrive in rural areas as refugees, but are then forced to migrate to the cities in order to find work to survive and support their households.

STATE RESPONSES

The post-apartheid Government's responses to these problems have often been diverse, incoherent, inconsistent and essentially contradictory. There has been little shift in ideological position from the past, and the current legislation is mainly informed by the Aliens Control Act of 1991. This has been described as a 'draconian' leftover from apartheid and appears more concerned with the security elements of 'control', rather than protection. Suggestions to extend and upgrade the electric fences on the Mozambican and Zimbabwean borders, and intensify the tracing, apprehension, detention and repatriation, in turn increasing the level of human rights violations, outline a policy aimed at the increasing 'securitisation' of forced migration concerns.12 Despite attempts to draft a new Refugee Act in 1994, little of substance has been achieved in terms of the protection of refugees rights.13 Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the scale of the influx has increased dramatically, partially as a response to the opening of borders with the end of apartheid and the concomitant winding down of the regional conflicts in neighbouring countries. Several practical problems are worth noting in discussing this influx.

Mozambicans, in general, have been the object of two programmes: the UNHCR Voluntary Repatriation Programme (spectacularly unsuccessful), and a pro-active programme of forcible deportation by the South African state. In roughly one year of its operation, the UNHCR managed to process just over a tenth of the 250 000 case load it originally intended to deal with. Forcible deportation, however, has apparently been more significant in numerical and financial terms involving more than three times the number (about 100 000) and costing roughly R220 million in 1994 compared to the R20 million that the UNHCR spent. However, most deportees come right back across the border within a few days.14 The Aliens Control Act No 96 of 1991, gives any police officer the right to declare anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant a "prohibited person" and therefore subject to removal. The victim has no right to contest this and no right to appeal.

In general, the Government has allowed its policies to be based completely on international relations tenets of political realism, or realpolitik. The Government acts in what it perceives as its own self-interests with the state playing the role of a Hobbesian actor: the new South Africa merely has a responsibility to its own citizens. In this sense migration becomes a 'soft' threat to territorial boundaries and control of employment opportunities. The attempts by the South African state to resist migration is informed by similar concerns as those confronting any other state: migrants are perceived as exacerbating unemployment, that is they take jobs away from locals, and they are a drain on the material and social resources. Ironically, the basis of the new State, informed by a struggle against previous human rights violations, reverts to similar state-centred politics, informed by the apartheid period. In turn, this has led to increasing xenophobia and resentment against the migrants at all levels. While the new South Africa says it is willing to take in skilled and professional people, it clearly is disinterested in unskilled workers.

In the case of the new South Africa, these policies are problematic on several grounds.

They are challenged by new dynamics in the post-Cold War period which have tended to undermine the sanctity of the State and have pushed new global issues to the fore. South Africa has changed dramatically and it needs to change more to adapt to these circumstances. As a magnet to people from other neighbouring countries, it needs to policies that go beyond the narrow confines of South African borders.

Secondly, and following on from this, the new State in South Africa has unveiled commitments to human rights under its much vaunted Reconstruction and Development Programme. If it is argued that refugee and migration issues fall under the gamut of human rights concerns, then this is clearly problematic. Minister of Home Affairs, Buthelezi has argued that, "[i]f we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Programme."15 Official estimates put unemployment in South Africa at 33 per cent, but unofficial figures cite it as high as 45 per cent. In general, policy makers, such as Penuel Maduna, the former Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, have indicated that illegal immigrants have and will continue to have a negative impact on the programme for reconstruction and development in South Africa. These threats are usually categorised in terms of unemployment, health (various diseases, including cholera and aids), the increase in the crime rate (illegal immigrants for instance are often associated with drugs), squatting and overpopulation (in most cases overburdening the resources of the State). Even labour unions – although to some extent sympathetic to the economic conditions and plight of migrant workers – cite the argument that illegal immigrants are being used to undermine labour standards, before other kinds of arguments. Organised labour, despite being aware of the problems, has therefore also adopted a state-centric, border type mentality. The perceived lumping together of illegal immigrants and refugees by the South African Government reflects its attempt to deal with a problem without having a consistent policy in this regard. As Maxine Reitze has argued, the "rights argument is a double edged sword: for if the claims against illegal immigrants are justified, then it can be argued that they are undermining the social and economic rights of South African citizens to whom the government has given a primary commitment."16 Again, this is a conflict between international versions of human rights and domestic, state-centred bills of rights, or a conflict between state processes and global processes.

Thirdly, a commitment to regional development is also inconsistent with Pretoria's position on immigration. If illegal immigration and refugees are seen as a threat, and the State's response is Machiavellian in nature, it undermines any larger programme to develop the Southern African region as a whole in a way that will provide stability, peace and economic growth. There are well over 1,5 million refugees in other neighbouring countries (such as Zimbabwe and Malawi) – many as a result of past destabilisation policies. Some argue that South Africa has a moral, political and economic responsibility to these. Interestingly enough, the text of the Reconstruction and Development Programme argues that, "[i]n the long run, sustainable reconstruction and development in South Africa requires sustainable reconstruction and development in Southern Africa as a whole. Otherwise, the region will face continued high unemployment and underemployment, leading to labour migration and a brain drain to the more industrialised areas."

Unfortunately, the rhetoric is not being matched by an informed policy, since the Green Paper on Migration has not yet been finalised. The complexity of the migrant/refugee policy is also compounded by the difficulty the State has in approaching it as a domestic issue or as part of foreign policy. The issue appears to address both domestic concerns and regional development issues. The question also remains over the issue of migrants/refugees taking jobs away from nationals in the post-apartheid period, as regional integration introduces the requirement for the free flow of labour.

The fact that South Africa is also a core and rich area (in the regional and African sense), engaged heavily in regional development and starting to invest substantially in the peripheral states, provides a point of comparison. Forced migration, a broader concept than refugees, allows us to consider the concept of 'migration of attraction' that has become a fairly significant factor, as skill and labour are increasingly attracted to the prospects of a relatively stable and prosperous South Africa. This follows the destabilisation of the political and social structures during the Cold War period through policies of destabilisation (allegedly,South Africa inflicted damage of two million people dead, millions more displaced and inflicted damage of something like $65 billion dollars on the economies of its neighbours).17 Southern Africa is now engaged in a new regional development policy. This is even more important when one considers the global marginalisation of Africa. Mozambican refugees/ illegal aliens are located in economically marginal border areas of South Africa – a historical continuation from the days of apartheid. They work in urban areas and white farms, and are denied recognition and assistance. Their marginalisation is thus extended and perhaps compounded.

NEW AGENDAS FOR SOUTH AFRICA

The State as a major actor has a defining role in the processes of nationbuilding, and this is clearly one of the most important agendas for the new South African State. In turn, the State is faced with a series of dilemmas. These include how to regulate legal immigration and provide for the integration of legitimate settlers, adoption of policies to deal with illegal immigration, the understanding and preparation for ethnic factors that affect social change, and their consequences for the development of the nation-state.

The fact is that South Africa in the post-apartheid period has become associated with apparent large-scale economic opportunities. This has increased its magnetism for economic migrants who, for one reason or another, are seeking a better and hopefully richer life outside their country of origin. Thus, South Africa has become the reluctant recipient of forced migrants from traditional neighbouring states, such as Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, as well as further afield from Angola, Cameroon, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire, among others.

To a large degree, these movements have developed in conjunction with the major political and economic transformations taking place in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid.

CONCLUSION

Restrictionism, control and deterrence in the global and regional treatment of migrants and refugees will become more understandable when seen within the framework of a political theory of the nation-states that, among others, have taken upon themselves the task to maintain political and geographic boundaries, to protect and enhance the self-interests of its citizens, and to form and maintain a national identity through a sustained but distorted definition of otherness as embodied in those migrants who have crossed such boundaries, legally or illegally. One may venture to argue that these sentiments of restrictionism and hostility toward migrants are increasingly being internationalised through a transnational diffusion of attitudes, rhetoric, rationalisations and justifications. In this sense, a great deal more emphasis should be placed on the relationship between the new international human rights regimes and the processes of globalisation that account for massive human displacement, as people flock to cities and modernisation takes place.

The relationship of South Africa to its refugee and migration crisis reminds one of Arendt's insightful analysis of the relationship between statebuilding and victim groups. As a state chooses to forge an identity on the basis of race, religion, nationality or ideology, it produces target minorities and victim-groups – the process of forming a new state is often itself a refugee-generating process.18 Many of the migrants/ refugees, having left their countries of origin, are now carving out their provisional, liminal existence within the 'cracks' of nation-states, while, in the meantime, watching themselves helplessly being classified, labelled, stigmatised, reclassified, and relabelled.19 The agony of the Arendtian condition of statelessness persists and there is no foreseeable end to the dilemma of forced migration in the new South Africa.

This article has argued that the protection of the refugee and the internally displaced must be approached and understood within the larger framework of human rights and the forces of globalisation. The effects of the combination of the latter forces are particularly salient, as South Africa opens up to the world after decades of isolation. Despite documents stipulating that people have the right to move freely within the borders of their own country, and the various international covenants and conventions on civil and political rights and on genocide stating that minorities should be able to practice their cultures and religions (among other aspects) without any hindrance, the effects of globalisation within South Africa's internal and regional context may have much more impact in the long run.

In terms of new security agendas, it appears more than likely that forced migration and displacement, overshadowed in part by the Cold War, will remain and increase in importance where borders and principles of sovereignty are contested notions. In this sense, South Africa, acting in terms of realist notions and self-interest, would be better prepared to accommodate such difficulties if it adopted a consistent and formally institutionalised migrant/refugee regime, instead of haphazard, piecemeal solutions.

ENDNOTES

S Castles and M Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, Guilford Press, New York, 1993, p. 22.



The best overview to date of the inadequacy of the conceptual development of security is to be found in B Buzan, People, States And Fear, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London, 1991, pp. 3-12.



See authors such as E H Carr (1939) and H J Morgenthau (1948) for classic expositions of the realist line of thought and the emphasis on power. For an interesting variant on this thinking which tries to deal with security, A Wolfers argues that "security is a value some countries prize to a greater extent than others. The level of security sought by states is not always identical. In fact, political leaders are often confronted with a dilemma as to whether a given increment in defense conflicts with other values" ;in J E Dougherty and R Pfaltzgraff Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations, 2nd Edition. Harper and Row, 1981.



See M Howard, Shooting at a moving target, Times Literary Supplement, 13 March 1992, pp. 7-8.



See S Hall, Europe's Other Self, Marxism Today, August 199,1 pp. 18-19; he argues that the "the two favourite markers in this discourse are 'refugees' and 'fundamentalism'".



See Buzan, op. cit., p. 447.



See B M Tsamenyi, The Boat People: Are they Refugees?, Human Rights Quarterly, 5, 1983, p. 361.



See M Reitzes, Divided on the Demon: Immigration Policy Since the Elections, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, 1995.



See E Boesch and A Goldschmidt, Refugees and Development, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, 1983.



See E F Kuntz, The Refugee in Flight: Kinetic Models and Forms of Displacement, International Migration Review, 7, 1973, pp. 125-146.



See M E Olson, Refugees as a Special Case of Population Redistribution, in L A P Gosling and L Y C Lim (eds.), Population Redistribution: Patterns, Policies and Prospects, UN Fund for Population Activities, New York, 1979.



See M Reitzes and C Landsberg, (1995). Pretoria's Hobbesians and the Aliens: Challenges for Development, Human Rights and Security, paper presented at the International Organisation for Migration, Symposium on Migration Management and Policy Objectives for South Africa, Pretoria, 1995; see also Centre for Southern African Studies (CSAS), Report on Immigrants, Refugees, and Displaced People, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, 1995.



See G Al-Omari, Comments on the South African Refugee Act 1994, unpublished paper, Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford, UK, 1996.



See C Dolan, Aliens Aboard: Mozambicans in the new South Africa, Indicator SA, 12(3), 1995, p. 29.



Ibid., p. 30.



See Reitzes and Landsberg, op. cit., p. 14.



See O Ibeanu, Apartheid Destabilization, and Displacement: The Dynamics of the Refugee Crisis in Southern Africa, Journal of Refugee Studies, 3(1), 1990, pp. 47-63.



See H Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 5th edition, Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, New York, 1973; S M Tarzi, The Nation State, Victim Groups and Refugees, Ethnic and Racial Studies, (14) 4, 1991; A Zolberg, The Formation of New States as a Refugee Generating Process, The Annals, 467, 1983, pp. 24-38.



See R W Zetter, Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity, Journal Of Refugee Studies, 4(1),1991, pp. 39-62.