A Plan to Address Immigration and Revitalise Our Inner Cities  

20 October 2021

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Today ActionSA President and Joburg Mayoral Candidate, Herman Mashaba, presented, alongside our Mayoral Candidates in Gauteng, Abel Tau from Tshwane, and Tlhogi Moseki from Ekurhuleni, our plan to Address Immigration and Revitalise Our Inner Cities by ensuring the effective management of immigration, improving access to community safety resources and creating an inclusive and enabling environment for jobs in our cities for all.

Our plan is founded on several fundamental considerations, chief amongst them being our understanding that (a) effective immigration control means cities are able to seek the level of resources needed from national government to support all residents within cities. Additionally, (b) effective action on immigration protects foreign nationals who seek to comply but have been let down by the Department of Home Affairs, and it also protects those who may then fall victim to exploitation because they are “outside the system.”

The Republic of South Africa was built by migrants, from all walks of life, and that history continues to positively contribute to the richness of our diversity. The effective management of migration and immigration within cities is key to delivering services for the betterment of all our residents, foreign nationals and South Africans alike.

It remains ActionSA’s steadfast belief that the failure and chronic mismanagement of our immigration system must be laid at the feet of the grossly incompetent ANC-led government, not foreign nationals. A large part of the problem with undocumented foreign nationals is our dysfunctional government. Many law-abiding foreign nationals (legitimate asylum seekers, refugees & workers with scarce skills) do everything to comply but are failed by the incompetent & corrupt Department of Home Affairs.

Therefore, to ensure effective immigration management in order to revitalize our cities, we would:

- Conduct inter-governmental operations to improve services to legal foreign nationals. In this, we will work with the Department of Home Affairs and the South African Police Service to address illegal immigration while ensuring that legitimate asylum-seekers, refugees, and skilled migrants can legally and fully enjoy access to municipal services.

We will no longer permit Home Affairs to hide their heads in the sand on this issue. Addressing this issue requires strong political will and it is time our governments address it. Where we govern, we will not shy away from addressing immigration challenges faced by the city and its impact on service delivery and all residents.

- We will address illegal immigration through inter-governmental relations, working actively with the Department of Home Affairs, National Treasury, and other relevant government entities to ensure that it is easier for skilled foreign nationals to enter our country legally or to get protected legal status in order to contribute to the economy and create jobs.

Where the national government fails to deal with undocumented foreign nationals, we will lobby for additional grant funding and the delegation of powers to our municipalities so that we can do the work ourselves.

- We will use data collection for accurate population growth modelling. The only way our municipalities can adequately plan for internal migration is by having accurate predictions of population growth.

Our municipalities will implement data-driven analytical forecasting to ensure that we can plan sufficiently for service delivery in the future. This will equally allow us to ensure that access to social services like clinics, libraries, and early childhood development centres are increased to accommodate increased urban populations numbers.

- We would demand that national government increase grant funding for inner-city developments. Cities cannot provide sufficient services and infrastructure for an ever-increasing urban population without sufficient funds. As such, government must increase cities’ funding for inner-city infrastructure investments.

- We would increase investment in local government law enforcement agencies as they play a significant role in maintaining law and order. Working with national law enforcement can play a meaningful role in controlling unlawful immigration. We will ensure sufficient investment in local law enforcement agencies’ capacity-building, intelligence activities, and human resource requirements.

Resolving our immigration challenges will not be the silver bullet to our problems, as they do not exist in a vacuum. Fixing South Africa requires that we fix our metros by ensuring Inner-city revitalisation. In order to do that, we would;

Reinstitute the programme of identifying, expropriating and releasing hijacked and abandoned buildings and factories to the private sector for development, to turn them into productive buildings, where businesses can operate and people can live.

Make the inner city more liveable by increasing cleaning, refuse removal, sewage, water and electricity service delivery efforts.

Work with housing companies to ensure that our residents have access to affordable and dignified housing opportunities in the inner city, in addition to the properties released to the private sector.

bring the state of lawlessness in the inner city to an end by increasing the presence of law enforcement officers, targeting drug dealers and using technology for intelligence-driven crime prevention and launch cross-functional and departmental enforcement operations to ensure that landlords and businesses in the inner city comply with the City’s by-laws.

make budget available to invest in new infrastructure and to upgrade and maintain existing infrastructure in the inner city.

establish a unit in each of our municipalities that will focus on implementing the inner-city revitalisation programme.

Over and above the management of immigration and the over-arching project of revitalizing the inner city, fixing our cities requires making them business-friendly and connecting residents to real economic opportunities. All ActionSA-led municipalities would;

Fix the municipal billing system.

work closely with National Treasury’s City Support Programme to ensure that we transform the City’s business processes.

establish a dedicated business support unit that will be staffed with highly qualified and professional business support staff from various departments.

reform the City’s Opportunity Centres so that these facilities provide transformative services to entrepreneurs and SMMEs.

It is clear for all South Africans to see that our present political system and leaders have failed communities by allowing the destruction of our immigration system. South Africans are correctly gatvol of that.

ActionSA is the only party that can FIX South Africa and it starts by fixing our municipalities, and we stand ready to deliver good governance the guarantees the safety of all South Africans.

Issued by Herman Mashaba, President, ActionSA, 20 October 2021