M Gigaba: Human Rights Day

21 March 2007

It is exactly 47 years today since those fateful massacres in Sharpeville
and kwaLanga which heralded the beginning of the period of the most intense
repression in our country that lasted for more than three decades until the
1990s.

For more than 30 years ever since that massacre South Africa was enveloped
in a cloud of gross human rights abuses, subjected to a regime that was angry,
insecure, short sighted and vicious, pursuing a narrow minded and blinding
racial ideology, having no respect nor regard for human life and human
rights.

Every year for 47 years ever since that unprovoked and brutal mowing down of
innocent, unarmed and peaceful people of Sharpeville and kwaLanga the people of
South Africa as a whole have refused to forget.

For 47 years we have upheld faithfully our conviction to replace apartheid
with a new society founded upon the basis of peace, social justice, equality
between peoples, democracy and freedom, a society underpinned by human rights
and human solidarity.

We are happy today to report to the men and women mowed down ruthlessly and
recklessly by the narrow minded and short sighted, trigger happy lunatics of
the apartheid regime's forces of repression that our country is today 13 years
into democracy and the vision for which they laid down their lives is gradually
coming to life.

South Africa is free. We enjoy a Constitution that not only guarantees and
protects our fundamental rights, it also promises us a future that is free,
peaceful and based on equality and justice.

The lesson of our struggle against apartheid informs us that we should place
a high value to human rights and freedom that we should not ourselves through
our own deed discriminate against anyone and undermine their human rights.

As a free country, South Africa assumed her role and position among the free
nations of Africa as well as the world.

In assuming this role of a free nation and in joining the free nations of
Africa and the world we undertook as a people to share the difficult
challenges, burdens and responsibilities that free nations had to share and we
became a partner in the pursuit for a better and peaceful world, a world
underpinned by social justice and equality.

It was because we know the tragedy and inhumanity of war and violence that
it kills, it destroys families, it breaks people apart, it breaks children
apart from their mothers and families and drives some to war itself and turns
them into child soldiers, it displaces millions of communities and families and
sends many to exile away from the homes they love, it was precisely for this
reason that in assuming the role of a free nation, South Africa has pursued
relentlessly the objective of peace, freedom and democracy throughout
Africa.

When some in our country questioned our role in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Ivory Coast and other countries when they
complained that we were spending too much time and money in these countries. We
did not pay attention to that distraction because knew that the only
sustainable way to end the phenomenon of refugees, asylum seekers and
internally displaced persons would come from peace, democracy and
development.

Today hundreds of thousands of people in Africa live outside their countries
of origin, not sure if they will ever go back there or whether they want
to.

Many countries of modest development than South Africa host hundreds of
thousands of people displaced by the wars, conflict and repression in their own
countries of origin and they never complain or give up their
responsibilities.

For decades, Africa hosted South Africa's own refugees during that period of
apartheid repression.

For decades now Africa has both created refugees and hosted many among her
generous, caring and giving people.

South Africans have also become friendly hosts to tens of thousands of
refugees and asylum seekers who have come to seek protection and refuge among
us, believing that our own experience and ever giving African spirit would
guide us to welcome them among us and to allow them to enjoy the peace and
freedom that we enjoy ourselves, the peace and freedom that they have in their
countries been denied by war and political repression.

During the last 13 years of our independence we have hosted the Congolese
both from the DRC and the Congo-Brazzaville, the Angolans, Mozambicans,
Rwandese, Barundi, the Ivorians, Ethiopians, Somalis, Sudanese, Liberians,
Zimbabweans and peoples from all over our continent and even beyond Africa.

These people have come among us and enriched our humanity and conscience and
made us a better people.

We have hosted them guided by our own ubuntu, that insuperable human spirit
that refuses to succumb to injustice and inhumanity guided by our revolutionary
political imperative to establish peace, freedom and democracy all over the
African continent and the world and guided by the international conventions
that we signed when we joined both the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) as
well as the United Nations (UN).

We have been guided by compassion and human solidarity!

What also needs to be realised is that South Africa is benefiting in a way
from the presence of immigrants and refugees in our county because many of them
bring skills, including some of the scarce skills that we need.

Refugees and immigrants have a major socio-economic contribution to make as
has already been witnessed in Masiphumelele bringing with them an
entrepreneurial spirit and culture that, if properly harnessed, can enhance the
local communities in which they settle.

Productive immigrants and refugees pay tax and save in order to rebuild
security in a new country. A large number of medium sized factories, building
firms and specialised commercial ventures in South Africa are started by
immigrants.

But refugees and immigrants also enrich our culture by enhancing its
diversity and making us understand more people and cultures than we are already
familiar with.

We therefore need to be more accommodating as a people for the sake of our
own socio-economic and cultural growth as well as for the purpose to enable
refugees and immigrants to enjoy our hospitality and settle peacefully and
happily among us.

South Africa as a country that recognises and respects human rights has an
obligation to provide all the necessary requirements as stipulated in the UN
and OAU Conventions.

As a humane and compassionate people we have an obligation to seek to help
and offer refuge to those in pain, suffering and need.

We have an obligation to ensure that refugees are properly integrated in the
communities in which they have settled, able to enjoy freedom, peace and pursue
happiness.

The integration of refugees must recognise their suffering and rights,
interests and responsibilities but at the same time it must recognise the
rights, interests, insecurities and responsibilities of the hosting
communities.

The experience of Masiphumelele has alerted us to the need therefore to
nurture strong local community leadership including on the side of refugees and
immigrants in general.

This experience of Masiphumelele has also raised the imperative for all
provincial governments and municipalities especially the metros to have
programmes towards immigration and refuges, guided by the national
framework.

Immigrants and refugees do not live in some space called national but settle
in local communities which fall under provincial and municipal governments and
have needs for basic and social services which are offered by municipalities
and local structures such as schools and clinics.

It is important therefore that a crucial part of this programme for
provincial and municipal governments must include the establishment of multi
stakeholder forums, involving business, labour, religious organisations and the
organisations of refugees and immigrants that would address all the challenges
that arise concerning both the local communities and the new arrivals in these
communities.

These forums are necessary between and within national, provincial and
municipal levels in order to ensure that there is proper co-ordination in the
management and implementation of international migration and refugee policies
and programmes.

The local integration of refugees and immigrants must result in them being
seen as a positive part of the local communities in which they have settled,
rather than a separate and parasitic others that must be confronted and
excluded.

The fact of the matter is that the process of international migration cannot
be stopped or reversed. There will always be migrants and hence communities in
South Africa must be told this truth and be prepared in order better to be able
to manage this phenomenon and benefit from the contribution immigrants and
refugees can make where they settle.

This also means that there must a robust and ongoing national debate and
public education on international migration and the challenges, rights,
interests and responsibilities of refugees.

The experience of Masiphumelele must teach us the necessary lessons and help
us to avoid future occurrences of this nature.

We must learn the correct lesson that not all conflicts between locals and
refugees and immigrants are just purely criminal. It could be a struggle for
scarce resources and other economic issues.

Indeed whenever conflicts occur law breakers must be dealt with according to
the law but strong local leadership and co-ordination must be utilised as a
more consistent and sustainable option to find durable solutions.

Crime must be dealt with regardless of who committed it. Crime is not worse
when committed by a refugee or an immigrant and better or tolerable when
committed by a South African.

Indeed, the current high levels of crime in our country constitute a
collective blemish on the achievement of our democracy and we must all work
hand in hand to eradicate it.

However, we must avoid the simplistic temptation to blame crime on
immigrants and refugees and we must insist that the police must deal with all
criminals regardless of their country of origin, race, gender and other
difference.

At the same time all who are within our borders must enjoy protection from
crime and criminals regardless of their country of origin, race, gender and
other difference. South Africans are not more human than other African people.
We are all one and equal African peoples with a common destiny!

We must therefore wage a relentless fight against xenophobia, prejudice and
discrimination, guided by the firm lessons of the people of Masiphumelele,
whose lesson and example is a guiding light to all of South Africa.

We have to have compassion for the suffering and humiliation endured by
refugees and asylum seekers and refuse to accept it that there should be
children born in refugee camps, growing up there not knowing the thundering
sound of peace but familiar only to the sound of the roaring and angry gun.

We must resent this when it happens to another as we would were it to happen
to us and our children!

I thank you!

Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
21 March 2007