Managing migration in South Africa’s national interest: Lessons from international experience
Key Points:
- Managing migration in South Africa has been ineffective due to a failure of political leadership, bureaucratic incapacity and the failure to cope with the multitude of challenges in respect to migration.
- South Africa constitutes 70% of the economy of the 14 countries in the SADC region, and being the largest economy in Africa, it is inevitable that South Africa will attract people from poorer countries.
- A lesson that South Africa can adopt from the migration management system of Australia is to: understand the global context to position our country in a way that takes advantages of the opportunities presented by migration; face migration challenges; formulate and implement policy; make policy appropriate to the present times.
- Migration is a challenging policy area in which failure and mismanagement can have devastating consequences for individuals and communities, potentially damaging our economy and hurting our international relationships.
