Operation New Broom is echo of apartheid past

The Citizen

a day ago

If Operation New Broom is the new face of immigration enforcement in South Africa, then shame on all of us.
In a move that belongs more in the archives of apartheid than in a democratic constitutional state, the department of home affairs has launched 'Operation New Broom', a campaign whose stated aim is to 'combat illegal immigration' through biometric verification and mass raids.
Sweeping with a 'broom' is no innocent metaphor, it's drawing a very intentional parallel between illegal migrants and rubbish, a dehumanising tell-tale signal of stripped rights, dignity and humanity.
An affront to every value enshrined in our Bill of Rights. If this is the new face of immigration enforcement in South Africa, then shame on all of us.
Barely two days after the campaign was launched on 21 May, more than 50 individuals, including children, pregnant women and asylum seekers, were rounded up during an early morning raid at the Plastic View informal settlement in Tshwane.
Minister Leon Schreiber called it 'a new era of digital border enforcement'. What followed was hardly innovation; it was humiliation, institutional cruelty dressed up in the vocabulary of tech-enabled governance.
Lawyers for Human Rights and 20 other organisations said the operation 'marks a troubling descent into repressive state practices reminiscent of the apartheid past'.
That is no exaggeration. Operation New Broom is not a policy, it is abuse of power, a show of force for the sake of political optics, where the primary victims are those least able to defend themselves.
Children were taken from schools and homes without due process. Babies were detained at the Lindela Repatriation Centre, a facility unfit to care for them.
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The constitution is clear: the detention of children must be a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period.
These events lay bare a troubling trend: the creeping securitisation of SA's borders and the scapegoating of migrants to mask governance failures.
This cannot be claimed to be part of an effort to address unlawful entry, it is a campaign showcase masquerading as immigration enforcement, a political theatre dressed as policy.
A familiar playbook keeps unfolding: blame the foreigner, distract the public and dress up persecution as patriotism.
Ahead of the 2026 municipal elections, politicians like Gayton McKenzie (Patriotic Alliance) have already begun calling 'Abahambe' (let them go) for the removal of migrants along ethnic and racial lines, embracing his xenophobic labelling.
Taking centre stage globally and in SA at the same time was the media frenzy surrounding the 59 Afrikaners granted refugee status by the US on the basis of alleged racial and economic persecution.
A sad irony that is difficult to ignore, particularly from within the African continent and SA itself, where the principles of Ubuntu, as enshrined in the constitution, call for compassion, shared humanity and the protection of the vulnerable.
The Constitutional Court has repeatedly affirmed Ubuntu as a guiding principle not only in private law, but in matters of state conduct.
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It is meant to embody dignity, empathy and social solidarity – all of which are absent from Operation New Broom.
Though the department has framed its action as lawful and measured and Cabinet has publicly praised it, nothing about the manner in which these raids were conducted passes constitutional muster.
This is not a crisis that ends at the border. Migrants may be the primary targets today, but the machinery of arbitrary enforcement rarely limits itself to one category of individuals.
Even SA citizens without access to proper documentation already encounter a contrarian bureaucracy on many levels.
In August last year, 700 000 IDs were automatically unilaterally blocked by the department, some merely on the suspicion of fraud or due to duplicate IDs reflecting in the systems, with no prior warning or due diligence.
The courts confirmed this to be unconstitutional because it lacked fair procedures, such as notice, investigation and an opportunity for appeal.
The dysfunction is systemic and it does not discriminate as neatly as the policies claim to. Without constitutional watchdogs and public scrutiny, no-one is immune.
Today's raid is tomorrow's precedent. Some have pointed to the use of biometric verification as a sign of progress and, indeed, it can significantly streamline processes and increase efficiencies on multiple levels.
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But in the hands of untrained officials and opaque institutions, such tools carry significant risk. Mismanagement is not a technical glitch, it is a gateway.
Without safeguards, digital enforcement quickly slides into digital authoritarianism. Deploying facial scans and fingerprint readers without legal safeguards or oversight is not governance, it is surveillance.
When the state uses such tools in vulnerable communities already suffering from economic exclusion and neglect, it amounts to profiling at scale.
This is not a moment for silence or bureaucratic indifference. It is a moment to remember that democracy is measured not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we treat the most vulnerable.
State-led roundups, data-driven profiling and the slow bleed of constitutional values is a recipe for instability.
Amnesty is not capitulation; it is legal realism. It is an invitation to build a functioning migration system that does not rely on repression to operate.
It is time for a new broom, yes, but one that sweeps away injustice, not people. One that restores rights, not just order.
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