Speech by Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on World Refugee Day, Motherwell

Premier Nosimo Balindlela, Premier of the Eastern Cape
Programme Directors
Speaker of the Nelson Mandela Metro Council, Charmaine Williams and Constituency Co-ordinator, Nohle Mohapi
Ebrima Camara, the representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
Deputy Metro Mayor Bicks Ndoni
Abdi-Rizak Kulow or Abdi Fatah Glass, representing the refugee community,
Zonke Majodina, the Deputy Chair of the Human Rights Commission
Fikile Desi, the Metro Councillor for this Area
All of you who have joined us from across the Nelson Mandela Metro and the province

Thank you all for the warm welcome we have received in the Eastern Cape today! Many of you will be aware that this is my home province, although my current deployment means that I cannot be here as often as I would like to and some of you might know that there was a period some time back when many of us knew from first hand experience what it meant to be far away from home because of the political and humanitarian situation in our own country.

We were exiles, or refugees, people for whom the absence from home was not voluntary. It was a painful experience, as much as we were inspired by the vision that we would one day be home again, in a democratic and free South Africa ruled by a constitution promising equality to all. So thank you first to all for giving me the opportunity to spend a day at home, in the beautiful Eastern Cape! It is these experiences of ours as exiles and refugees, programme director, which provide the first reason why I was very pleased to have the opportunity to speak at today's event marking World Refugee Day, of course I am also with you today as Home Affairs Minister, as the political head of the department responsible for the status of refugees, as part of the daily mandate we fulfil on behalf of the country. We are aware that refugee affairs, like many aspects of our work, faces challenges, among these is the very large numbers of people who apply for refugee status although they have not left their countries because they are the victims of political or ethnic persecution.

Many people from our neighbouring countries who come to South Africa do so as economic migrants but some have been wrongly informed that you can get permission to stay if you claim to be a refugee. They are not refugees under South African law and they would not be recognised as refugees in other countries either but the fact that this fairytale has done the rounds that refugee status is an easy way to get permission to stay has been clogging our processes and it is a major factor in creating the backlogs we are dealing with currently.

Now programme director, I will say something about economic migrants in just a minute, but let me first say that there are of course other factors in addition which have allowed the mountain of refugee applications to grow at Home Affairs. These are internal organisational factors which we are doing something about at this very moment as the Turnaround Action Team we have deployed into the department comes to grips with improving the system in the interests of refugees and in the interests of all South Africans. The reform and improvement of the refugee system within Home Affairs is one of the "quick wins," we have announced which will contribute to building the New Home Affairs over the next several months. Indeed as we meet here, the Turnaround Action Team with its task group made up of officials and of consultants from outside dedicated to fixing refugee affairs has already started its work.

It is important that we fix the system because we have a constitutional obligation to ensure that genuine refugees are acknowledged and given the support we are able to give them in a reasonable amount of time, but it is important too, maybe we should say even more important because we have a moral obligation to support those who have been forced to flee political, ethnic and other forms of persecution. This obligation comes from our own history but it also arises out of the vision we have of the society we want to create, it comes from the vision of the South Africa we are building. And this is why today our event to mark World Refugee Day is as much about reflecting on the caring, compassionate and open society we must build for ourselves as it is about remembering the plight of those who have been forced to come to us for shelter Because it is only a society which is caring and compassionate and open towards itself which will be able to care for others if they come to us in times of need.

Programme director, Premier, We are all aware of the tensions that some communities have experienced in relation to the presence of foreigners, particularly of those who indeed are refugees. These tensions cannot be wished away and we should not seek to ignore them. Instead, we must all be asking ourselves as local councillors, religious leaders, schools, sports and youth groups, the media, community and opinion leaders of what it is we are doing to encourage interaction, understanding, tolerance and acceptance because tolerance and acceptance of foreigners is surely part of a larger picture within our own society. Tolerance and acceptance of diversity, of those who are not like us, are values which are at the heart of our constitution and at the heart of what we are trying to achieve as a country. They are values enshrined in our constitution precisely because they were denied to so many of us for so long in the land of our birth, denied even to the extent that some were forced to flee, becoming exiles and refugees.

These values of tolerance and acceptance of diversity must start in our own homes with tolerance and acceptance for the differences, the very positive differences which characterise men and women and tolerance and acceptance between the diverse peoples of our own country is surely the basis for our interaction as a nation as we move forward together. These are surely values we all seek to make reality as we build our society. These are values we must embrace because they are at the core of the whole idea of equality which is the foundation of our democracy and our society.

Programme directors, Premier, all of this is not to suggest that it will always be easy to promote tolerance and acceptance of diversity. We still live in a society where many of our people face a daily struggle for resources. We live in a society still characterised for too many people by poverty, whatever the enormous successes have been of the past 13 years in growing our economy and empowering our people. It is because of the daily challenges many of our people must face that the African National Congress government has made the fight against poverty its number one priority and we will continue to do so by developing economic policies to benefit more and more of our people all of the time.

By growing the skills of our people by bringing investments such as those which are now beginning to mature at places like Coega and will be securing jobs and industry for the eastern half of the province through the Premier's Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) Eastern Cape plan, but even as we work to strengthen the economic sectors like the Eastern Cape motor industry and tourism to create jobs and fight poverty amongst our people, we still have a duty to ourselves to promote tolerance of others. We still have a duty to promote the peaceful resolution of conflict in our communities, this is because we want the violence that characterised our past, the violence which drove so many South Africans to become refugees, whether in Africa or elsewhere in the world, we want the violence to be a thing of the past.

Violence cannot be the solution to our problems! It cannot resolve problems between South Africans and foreigners seeking to survive amongst us, many of them are people who have already experienced horrific things in their home countries. Violence cannot be the solution in our homes, it cannot be the solution to arguments or conflicts between men and women and so when we say that religious, community and opinion leaders, schools, sports and youth groups must all contribute to tolerance and acceptance of those from other countries who are among us, we are also saying that it is that tolerance and acceptance of difference and diversity we ourselves cannot live without.

We cannot live without it because we are a diverse country and we always will be. We have not always been a tolerant country, but we are on the best road there, guided by our constitution and laws which protect diversity. Understanding that our neighbours (whether they are refugees or simply economic migrants) are contributing to our society and our economy must be part of growing that tolerance. We must remember that economic migration is an international phenomenon confronting every region of the globe. There is not a country in the world which does not face an influx from its neighbours if it is economically more stable or successful and so it is logical that we as South Africa, with our growing economy and let us remember that the tiny Gauteng alone produces about 9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the whole of Africa it is logical that our economy would be a magnet for economic migrants from the region.

In this context it is important not to forget that the economies of the region are networked, with families and communities in neighbouring states relying on remittances from migrants working in South Africa. The other side of the coin of course is that South Africa has long relied on those workers to help build our economy, whether in the mines or in industry. That is not to say that we should invite or even tolerate a free for all. As Home Affairs we have a role in regulating the status of those who come from other countries looking for work and in administering the protection the law offers to genuine asylum seekers and we will play that role in the interests of all South Africans. We will do so as we transform our department into a model of service delivery to the people. We will do so as we build the new Home Affairs for South Africa under the project we launched some four weeks ago. Already, we are able to report that in the past year we have been able to clear the backlog of 13 000 applications for permanent residence.

We continue to push our refugee backlog project, despite the difficulties it faces. These include the sheer volume of applicants who in fact have no claim to asylum but have been led to believe that this is an easy way to regularise their status, as I mentioned earlier Even though we have adjudicated almost 37 000 refugee applications, the backlog project has not gone as well as we would have wanted it to and so we continue to work on the remaining 75 000 applications. We are working on flattening the mountain and this project will be part of the work of the Turnaround Action Team as I mentioned earlier.

Programme Directors, Premier, we have with us today Ebrima Camara, the representative of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. We are happy to have this opportunity to thank him for the time he has spent in South Africa during which he has offered wise counsel and been unsparing in sharing his experience of refugee affairs. Mr Camara is due to retire soon and we wish him all of the best. He has been a model representative of this important organisation within the United Nations (UN) system but perhaps more importantly, he has been a symbol of why it is that we as South Africans place so much store by building the United Nations, the African Union, and South African Development Community (SADC), which are at the heart of the multilateral system for us. We have put energy and resources into building these institutions despite the attacks they have faced from critics who are not always well informed and not always interested in the international rule of law. This is because our own experience during the days of the struggle against apartheid was that the multilateral institutions have a very important moral voice in the world, most often standing on the side of the oppressed

And it is because we understand that without the multilateral organisations, we will never achieve the development, the economic growth, the stability and the democratic dispensation which Africa needs to stop producing refugees. Just last week, Programme Directors, we welcomed President Kabila of the Congo to South Africa on a state visit. He is the duly elected head of state of a country which just a few short years ago was stuck in a bloody war which killed millions and displaced many more. It was a war which was predestined to produce refugees, many of whom found their way here.

By putting our best efforts into supporting the peace process and the elections in the Congo under the auspices of the African Union (AU) and the UN, we as South Africa contributed to stability and the chance for democracy and economic growth in the Congo is now a country which will be able to welcome its people home who once fled as refugees from the bloody conflict, just as we were welcomed home after 1990. And so I appeal to all to understand that when we deploy our National Defence Force or our diplomats or senior politicians to other African countries, we do so in the interests of stability and peace because stability and peace are the minimum requirements for ensuring that our continent does not harm its own interests through conflicts which force people to flee their homes and the countries of their birth.

Programme Directors, Premier, we can be proud of the contribution South Africa is making to the resolution of conflicts on our continent. We can be proud of the contribution we are making as members of the African Union and of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), we can be proud of the role we are playing currently as members of the UN Security Council and we can, I am sure of this despite the challenges which still lie ahead, we can be proud of our track record of absorbing and supporting those who come to us having flown from persecution and so as we come towards the end of today's commemoration of International Refugee Day with the reading and signing of the pledge, let us all resolve to be able to say next year that we can be proud of what we have achieved in advancing tolerance and acceptance of diversity in our country because it is tolerance and the acceptance of diversity which will allow our communities to live at peace with themselves, whoever belongs to those communities, whether South Africans, or people from other countries, including refugees

Thank you

Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
20 June 2007