Dr Mathe
I hope you had a good day and that you and your loved ones are well.
First let me state that South African activists like @JacintaNgobese@PhakelaMthakath
and others have sparked a debate on illegal immigration that has even crossed our national borders. That discussion can never be ignored even by State Presidents of many African countries. That is the beauty of democracy: freedom of speech and opinion are respected in South Africa. In other countries, these activists would have been hunted down or even killed by now. Not in South Africa. Here, you can openly criticise the sitting President or march at the Union Buildings without fear.
Secondly, I respectfully disagree with Dr @DlaminiZuma
when she says we are โbarking up the wrong tree.โ Let us be honest: the โwrong treeโ is precisely where our public services are collapsing under the weight of illegal immigration.
It is a fact that public hospitals are overcrowded, schools are stretched beyond capacity, and public services are strained not because the ghosts of apartheid are still issuing ID numbers, but because undocumented migration has created a parallel population consuming public services. When clinics in Musina- Limpopo province run out of medicine, it is not an abstract inequality gap at play; it is the very real pressure of thousands of undocumented patients crossing the border daily to collect free medication that is not available in their own country.
And here lies the irony my good Dr. Zimbabwe โtook the landโ in the name of empowerment, only to leave much of it idle, while some its citizens who are illegal immigrants, now work on farms in South Africa . South Africa therefore carry a double burden: our own land reform stalls, while we subsidise the consequences of their failed land reform. Is that not continental comedy, my good Dr?
I honestly and wholeheartedly agree that inequality is a root cause. However, to pretend that illegal immigration has no impact is intellectual dishonesty. Public services are finite. Every undocumented learner in a classroom means fewer resources for South African children. Every undocumented patient in a hospital bed means longer queues for citizens. Every undocumented worker undercuts wages and weakens labour protections.
I argue that when people demand enforcement of immigration laws, it is not โhateโ or โpolitical sensationalism.โ It is a rational cry for survival in a system already buckling under the pressure of illegal immigration. Many of these illegal migrants are too afraid to challenge their own Presidents who amend constitutions to extend their terms of office, yet they are vocal in lecturing South Africans on how to behave in South Africa.
My good Dr Mathe, the real question is whether South Africans should continue footing the bill for neighbouring governmentsโ failures and be a mecca of illegal immigrants, while being told they are barking up the wrong tree?
Thank you for engaging with my post and may you and your loved ones stay blessed. ๐ฟ๐ฆ๐๐ฝ