Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

From the window of my office in Parliament, I can see the Slave Lodge
directly over the road. It was built in 1679 to house the slaves of the
Dutch East India Company. More than a century later, in 1807, the slave
trade was abolished in the British Empire. Slaves in the Cape rebelled the
following year.

This is all such ancient history, but it should never be far from our
consciousness, for slavery still exists. It is estimated that there are some
30 million slaves worldwide today. Debt bondage, indentured servitude and
bonded labour are merely euphemisms.

A leading abolitionist calculated the average price of a slave in 2009, as
compared to the price in 1809, and found that, despite mankind's move
towards a human rights culture, we value human life less now in economic
terms. In 2009 a slave cost $90. Two hundred years ago, the average price
was $40 000; taken at today's monetary value.

It seems it is all about money, which is not surprising.

In 1997, the American documentary film-maker Michael Moore pointed out, "It
would take 1 percent of Nike's entire advertising budget to put its whole
workforce of 12,000 above the poverty line." In 2011, we still
stereotypically think of slave labour as something that only happens in
sweat shops in Asia, far removed from our own reality.

But that is simply not the case. South Africa struggles with the evil of
human trafficking and is known as both a transit and a destination country.
Sadly, we are also a source. While we have made efforts to tackle human
trafficking, we remain on the second tier of the annual Trafficking in
Persons Report (TIP) that tracks governments around the world. Tier Two
countries are those that do not meet the minimum standards.

It's disheartening that we have not made more progress. During my tenure as
Minister of Home Affairs, TIP consistently deemed our efforts to combat
human trafficking significant enough to keep South Africa off the watch
list. After all this work, it pained me to see South Africa drop onto the
watch list immediately after I left, and stay there for the next four years.

Clearly we cannot let our guard down and stop being vigilant. Human
trafficking is but one of the demons of migration. Another is xenophobia.

I was appalled to read comments made by the Chairperson of the Portfolio
Committee on Home Affairs recently. In front of the Deputy Minister of Home
Affairs and the Deputy Director General for Immigration Services, neither of
whom contradicted her, the Chairperson marveled that there was anyone left
in Somalia. She suggested they were all at the Refugee Reception Office in
Maitland.

She went on to say that South Africa's economy would suffer if we continued
to take in refugees who, she averred, used our Constitution and human rights
laws as an excuse to enter South Africa. Finally she suggested that asylum
seekers were the reason South Africans had not enjoyed their freedom since
1994.

There is a vast difference between asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.
An ANC MP, particularly in the Home Affairs portfolio, should know better.
Clandestine migration certainly causes all sorts of problems for our
country, from town planning to an overburdened social service
infrastructure. But to lay all these problems at the door of refugees is a
reprehensible error.

Our Government needs to work much smarter to prevent abuses of the asylum
seeker system, for we are moving closer and closer to the tipping point at
which the veracity of an asylum claim will be irrelevant in the mind of
South Africans. All will be painted with the brush of hate. And that is
where xenophobia will catch flame.

The Chairperson of the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee later apologised for
her xenophobic comments.

The next day, allegations of police intimidation surfaced in the Somali
community in Mayfair, Johannesburg after a joint operation by police units
and Home Affairs immigration officers closed down Amal Shopping Centre.
Armed plainclothes policemen allegedly fired shots, forced patrons to lie
face down on the floor and cut wires to security cameras.

The timing is mere coincidence, for acts of xenophobia have arisen in many
places, against many nationalities, many times in the past. South Africa
struggles with xenophobia, which makes offhand, insensitive comments highly
inflammatory.

But it's not just a matter of what we say. The real problem is what we
fundamentally believe. If we believe South Africa needs to shut its doors to
foreigners in distress, let us not talk about ubuntu botho.

When I was Minister of Home Affairs I piloted migration legislation that
sought to open the door wider to investment and tourism, while closing it
more firmly on illegal entry. We acknowledged all the problems of South
Africa's porous border, of exponentially increasing movement of people, of
economic migrants and lack of capacity. But we challenged Government to seek
solutions that upheld South Africa's human rights culture.

It can be done. Start by moving Refugee Reception Offices closer to our
borders. This will dispose of the nonsensical and inhumane demand that
people with very limited means must travel halfway across South Africa
within five days to present themselves to a RRO. The likelihood of genuine
asylum seekers becoming undocumented migrants will decrease, and the line
between who we need to help and who we need to deport will become far
clearer.

There is a line, and blurring it further can only cause problems.

Yours in the service of the nation,