Here’s an interesting development:
South Africa is planning to withdraw from UN conventions so the government can restrict immigration and send refugees back to countries that are not deemed dangerous.
Indeed, the nation’s statistics agency said last month there were more than 2.4 million migrants in South Africa last year, with the highest percentage coming from neighboring Zimbabwe at 45.5 per cent, followed by Mozambique and Lesotho.
‘Migration between countries is driven largely by the quest for economic opportunities, political instability, and increasingly, environmental hazards,’ said Statistics South Africa.
A little-known fact about Seffrica is that it’s seen as a Mecca, so to speak, by all the other sub-Saharan African countries (a.k.a. shitholes) because it’s seen as the best-functioning country in the sub-continent, with the greatest opportunities for jobs.
Fact: Seffrica has an “official” unemployment rate of over 48%, and in some areas it’s a lot higher.
Fact: Most Black Seffricans loathe the “immigrants” from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi et al., and they display their enmity in the traditional manner: murder, disembowelment, amputation and immolation (when they can find any gasoline, that is). In fact, if you subtract the murders of migrants from the statistics, then the national murder rate drops quite substantially (to about double that of South Side Chicago, for instance). And those are the official (i.e. reported) murders; most go unreported, and un-investigated by the world’s most incompetent and corrupt police force.
Fact: Violent crime perpetrated by said “immigrants” and “asylum seekers” is obscenely high. A huge number of the carjacking gangs, burglary rings and so on are organized and staffed by the above, and one of Seffrica’s most notorious serial killers (recently captured) was a native Mozambican.
So it’s no surprise that the Seffrican government has taken the stance that it has:
Mr Motsoaledi said the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had made a ‘serious mistake’ when it signed up to international agreements without seeking exceptions from certain clauses. Other countries had opted out of giving refugees the same rights as citizens.
The government minister said that the current liberal laws, which saw the ANC open up South Africa’s borders to migrants and asylum seekers at the end of apartheid rule in 1994, were now outdated and needed a ‘radical overhaul’.
Mr Motsoaledi is now pushing for people seeking asylum in South Africa to stay in the first safe country they enter – a proposal that will largely affect those from other African nations.
Under this plan, refugees from Malawi will have to stay in Zambia and not go further south (through Zimbabwe) to get to the Promised Land.
If all this sounds familiar to my Murkin and Brit Readers, it should. Plus ça change, plus la même chose.
“the best-functioning country in the sub-continent…”
I recently had an exchange with chap who’s published 222 gorgeously produced chapters in a rather clever alternate-history narrative. He told me he wrote most of it on his phone, during power outages. It seems that electricity is cut off every day for two hours or more. He’s quite used to it, he says – it’s not a serious problem.
He lives in Bloemfontein.