When immigration fights meet the politics of deepening divisions in a divided country

The announcement over the weekend that Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has decided to extend the Zimbabwean Exemption Permits until the end of June 2023 will give us more time for discussion about our policy towards migrants. It also puts in focus, again, the government’s (in)capability to administer/enforce a complex system of visas, waivers and extensions, let alone reconsider the basic humanity of their moves.

But those debates may in fact obscure a bigger contestation taking place beneath the surface in our society, about our identity and identities, and whether individual people who live in our country see themselves as “South African” first and foremost, and whether that excludes their identity as “African” in terms of coming from this continent. This debate may in fact have a bigger impact on political parties and our common future than it has been understood until this point.

On Saturday, the Home Affairs Department confirmed it was extending the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP). The official Home Affairs press release says the decision was made by Motsoaledi himself, following advice from the Home Affairs Departmental Advisory Committee.

Key to the decision is the fact that very few ZEP holders have yet applied to remain in the country through other visas.

Meanwhile, there are at least two, possibly three court cases being brought by various organisations to challenge the original decision to end the permit.

As it is now common practice in South Africa, it is likely that any decision by a court on this issue will be appealed. So high are the stakes (literally hundreds of thousands of people are being told to leave the places where they have lived and worked for the past decade) that it is bound to end in the Constitutional Court.

While Motsoaledi has said expressly that there will be no further extension after June next year, the final decision will be made by a court.

This raises the spectre of constantly shifting deadlines. Instead of the certainty that the ZEP has provided for a decade, Zimbabweans might have to live almost month to month, with certainty gone from their lives. They will be more vulnerable to employers and landlords, the ability to plan their lives shattered.

Read in more Daily Maverick: “Bitter exodus — We travel to Harare with returning Zimbabweans”

While the developments around the short-term dynamics of the ZEP are playing themselves out, outside Kalafong Hospital last week another tension was on display.

Members of the Operation Dudula movement were openly confronting people they believed to be foreigners, trying to stop them from entering the facility. The Health Department said Operation Dudula members were basing their decision about people based on “the colour of their skin” or the language they spoke.

Meanwhile, EFF members were confronting Operation Dudula, trying to protect foreigners.

This terrible event presented an open conflict within our society in front of a hospital, an institution that is set up to help, not divide human beings.

Continental identity