| Poverty knows no law or mercy |
|
|
| Written by Daniel Steinmann | ||||
Page 1 of 2
The problem of illegal immigrants is not new. From the late seventies, thousands of Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Basotho and Swazi were deported on a monthly basis. A blind eye was turned to this phenomenon. How could one explain to the world that South Africa had such a monstrous regime when thousands upon thousands of migrants risked life and limb just to be able to get in?
At that time, popular propaganda, both within South Africa and overseas
wanted the rest of the world to believe that South Africans are
attempting to flee en masse therefore the apartheid government had to
keep its citizens inside, almost Russian style. Of course, today we know all of that was hogwash, but still the propaganda made some spectacular claims especially during the eighties. The result was that in 1996, when the ANC took full control, South Africa had an extensive illegal immigrant problem. Estimates varied from 7 million to as high as 13 million. In a current population of an estimated 44 million, it means that close to a quarter of the entire population may be illegal depending on what statistics one uses. The ANC government with its lame-duck policies chose to do nothing. After all, how can they claim to fight for the African cause if all of a sudden they started applying the law and getting rid of aliens? This opened the floodgates and within ten years, another two million Nigerians, Cameroonians, Ghanaian, Congolese, Malawians, Ethiopians, and even a few thousand Pakistanis joined the seven million illegals. All the animals lived happily together in the zoo; the Nigerians, Cameroonians and Ghanaians pushing drugs and controlling contraband, blissfully living in their Hillbrow high rises, basically untouchable by the arm of the law, while the rest dabbled in petty crime and harassment. |
||||
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|