The Issue Of Immigration In South Africa
The number of immigrants living in South Africa has been hotly contested for many years. Perceptions among the general public of immigrants “flooding” into the country, taking jobs and resources resulted in horrific attacks against African migrants in 2008. When the carnage came to an end, more than 60 people lay dead. Since then, the country has seen other smaller outbreaks of xenophobic violence.
How Many Foreigners In South Africa
The South African 2021 Census found that there were 5.2 million immigrants in a country of 72 million in 2021. While it is possible that some undocumented migrants were not counted in the 2021 Census, this was corrected for by Stats SA in the final figure using the weighting factor that adjusts for possible undercount. Thus, the 2021 Census figure of 2.2 million foreign-born people in South Africa is supposed to include both documented and undocumented foreigners.
These remain the only official and credible numbers. Other figures, such as the ones used by the international media in 2020, are grossly exaggerated and not supported by any credible research or data.
Xenophobia In South Africa
In South Africa, where xenophobia is rife and violence against foreigners has taken many lives over the years—”such exaggerations are extremely dangerous, since they give credence to the belief that South Africa is overrun by foreigners who are stealing local jobs and putting a strain on services,” as Liesl Louw-Vaudran from the Institute for Security Studies wrote in 2015.
But the dangerous, irresponsible and unsubstantiated estimates and guesswork are back. And this time, these are the work of the United Nations and its agencies.
South Africa And Working Immigrants
According to the Migration Data Portal run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in 2017, South Africa was home to four million immigrants. This estimate is based on the work of the Population Division of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). UNDESA is suggesting the number of immigrants in South Africa has doubled between 2010 and 2017.
Given the widely acknowledged volatility of issues related to migration, it comes as a surprise that the new United Nations statistics seem to be founded on bad statistical methods and sloppy analysis. In any other context this might be overlooked as a matter only of interest to policy wonks. In South Africa, the issue has life and death implications.
The claims by UNDESA are all the more remarkable when put in perspective. Ethiopia and Uganda have seen similar dramatic increases in the same period due to a large movement of refugees from South Sudan and other conflict-ridden countries in the region. Another country that has seen a massive increase of refugees between 2011-2017 is Turkey. Again, this makes sense in light of the ongoing war in neighboring Syria which has forced millions of people to leave their homes.
It is highly unlikely that South Africa, with no war raging next door, has doubled the immigrant population since the last time statistics were collected in 2011. And while economic migrants make up a large part of the immigrant population, there is no reason why the numbers would have increased so dramatically in such a short period of time.
