Who really benefits when the state refuses to provide documents?

Mail & Guardian

7 hours ago

Ugandan refugees Jackson Ssebuliba and Winston Mukulu with social worker Nigel Branken inside the Pretoria Refugee Reception Office, where many are turned away despite legal protections. Photo: Supplied
This morning I am outside the Refugee Reception Office (RRO) in Pretoria with two Ugandan refugees. They have come here twice before and been turned away in violation of the Refugee Convention and South African domestic law.
We arrived at 4:25am and we were number five in the queue. It is now just after 5am, and already there are close to 50 people waiting. Vulnerable people, desperate to get documented.
The two people I am with fled to South Africa because of persecution they faced on account of their sexual orientation. Because the home affairs department has refused them entry before, they have been arrested, harassed,and labelled 'illegal immigrants'.
But whose actions are actually illegal here? Is it the refugees who, despite multiple attempts, have arrived at 4:00 am with a social worker to ensure access? Or is it the government that makes it impossible to get documented legally?
When I interviewed Carol Lemekwana, of Lawyers for Human Rights, on my radio programme, she revealed the horrific fact that in the past two years not one newcomer has been granted asylum or given proper refugee documentation. Not one. She leads a clinic that supports refugees trying to get documented.
The Scalabrini Centre recently had to go to court to stop the home affairs department from arresting people who arrive here to seek refugee status.
This Pretoria office is one of only three still operating in the entire country. The others have been closed despite court orders to reopen them — orders that have simply been ignored.
So we must ask: whose interests are served by not documenting people? I want to name four groups who benefit.
First, corrupt government officials. Take Phophi Ramathuba, who infamously told a vulnerable Zimbabwean patient recovering from surgery, 'You are killing my health care system.'
She said this just five weeks after the Special Investigating Unit recommended prosecutions in her department for R132 million in personal protective equipment fraud, two weeks after the Hawks raided her offices and seized phones and laptops as evidence of widespread corruption, and five days after the auditor general released a report exposing billions in fruitless and wasteful expenditure, R120 million in underspending and 51% of funded posts left vacant.
Why? Because it's easier to loot when you have fewer staff to account for spending. The auditor general was clear: maladministration, mismanagement and corruption — not foreigners — are what cripple Limpopo's health system. In fact, Statistics SA data shows negative net migration in Limpopo: foreign nationals declined from 2.9% of the population to 2.7% in the past five years. The numbers seeking care also declined. Politicians benefit by blaming migrants rather than their own corruption.
Second, politicians and officials who create patronage jobs in policing. Gauteng's premier has appointed new wardens supposedly to 'create jobs'. But jobs doing what? Policing those the government itself refuses to document, creating fear, extracting bribes. Imagine if those jobs were created where they are really needed — in service delivery, fixing infrastructure, supporting small businesses. But no. Policing vulnerability serves the neoliberal pact between government and big business.
Third, business benefits. They rely on a cheap, exploitable, desperate workforce with no legal recourse.
And fourth, criminal groups such as Operation Dudula benefit. In my work against xenophobia in Orange Grove, I saw how house hijackings were linked to xenophobic mobilisation. Sandra, one of the ringleaders, hijacked at least six houses, sold the furniture and rented them out room by room — all under the banner of 'helping South Africans.'
Police ignored more than 30 cases we laid at the Norwood station. Not one prosecution.
I also witnessed brothers running a 'protection racket', charging foreign shop owners monthly bribes. When they openly looted a shop, we confronted them. Even when caught on video. The police let them go.
And it's not just refugees who are intentionally left undocumented. Did you know only 89% of South Africans are documented? That means six million citizens lack identity documents or birth certificates, cutting them off from basic services and banking.
Then there is the saga of blocked IDs. Since about 2007-10, 2.8 million South Africans had their IDs arbitrarily blocked — often because their surname 'didn't sound South African', or because they travelled to neighbouring countries, or because they came from exile. No due process. Even after a January 2024 court order to unblock them, some 750,000 IDs remain blocked today.
I know people affected personally. A South African friend of mine, whose mother was arrested as an activist during apartheid, had his ID blocked simply because his father was Malawian. Decades of being excluded from jobs, study, and banking — all because of state-created statelessness.
Then there are the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) holders. For decades, they were here legally. Then, in one arbitrary cabinet decision, they were rendered undocumented. It took the Helen Suzman Foundation going to court to reverse it.
These were not people 'flooding in illegally'. They were legal residents suddenly made undocumented by government decree.
And all of this against the backdrop of studies showing that the vast majority of migrants enter South Africa legally through border control. The idea of 'floods of illegal immigrants' is a manufactured myth — one that thrives precisely because compliance has been made intentionally difficult and bribery is encouraged.
So next time you see Operation Dudula marching and chanting slogans, remember: they are not the truth-tellers. They are the foot soldiers of a system that thrives on corruption, exploitation and scapegoating.
We do not have an 'illegal immigrant crisis'. We have an illegal government crisis. A government that refuses to follow its own laws and deliberately creates a vulnerable underclass, only to then point fingers and say, 'You are the problem.'
If we want our democracy back, we must start by restoring the rule of law — beginning with the government itself doing its job.
Nigel Branken is a social worker, pastor and activist. He leads Neighbours, a civil society organisation building solidarity with marginalised communities with a focus on resisting xenophobia, defending human rights, and promoting systemic change. He has recently joined the South African Communist Party, aligning himself with its vision of justice, equality, and collective liberation.