Question: Minister, what was your message to the federation today?
Answer: Minister Dlamini Zuma: My message is that in government we need to work together in the service of our people, in the service who come into and out of South Africa, tourists, immigrants or even people who come here as asylum seekers. I have been saying all along that Home Affairs will only work better if we all work together. We must all take an interest in what is going on. And obviously, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is a major player and we have to work together if we want to get Home Affairs to where we want it to be. That is basically what my message way. This is one of many engagements that will follow.
Question: Minister, did you specifically talk about plans to amend the immigration policy?
Answer: Minister Dlamini Zuma: Yes, we agreed that we could not deal with this in detail but we agreed we will have a follow up meeting to which we will devote a lot of time. Because you can imagine that if we are talking about asylum seekers, immigrants the policy must be formed and informed by what the labour movement thinks and we also have to make our own inputs into this. We did mention it but we will obviously interact further on this.
Question (inaudible)
Answer: COSATU Secretary General: That is a very difficult issue that we have agreed with the Minister we will have to discuss in a workshop. COSATU as you know is an organisation formed by workers from the region Lesotho, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia and because of the history of the mining industry and the development of this country our leaders have been drawn from all those countries and that is why we have taken such a strong stand against xenophobic attacks against workers from the region and against workers from other parts of the world. We cannot afford to be xenophobic. We recognise the immense contribution of workers from the region to the South African economy. We know that Johannesburg and many other big cities in the country will not look as they do had it not been for the contribution of workers from the region.
We do however recognise the current challenge of, for example, Zimbabwean workers competing with South Africans for work opportunities. We do appreciate that those things lead to confrontations. We know that in the Western Cape only this weekend we saw another round of violence against workers from Zimbabwe on the farms of the Western Cape. We are aware that the employers are taking advantage of the situation and exploiting those workers. All of us employ workers from the region as domestic workers, in the hospitality industry, in the security industry, everywhere workers from the region are being superbly exploited by unscrupulous employers. This is the challenge we face. So, our migration policy must take all these things into account. We do not have answers on everything, for example, we must cultivate the call that South Africa can develop as an island of prosperity surrounded by a sea of poverty and underdevelopment or political instability.
This is why COSATU has taken such a strong stance against instability in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and so on. Our survival is so interlinked with the survival of the region. We will have another strategic session about what to do.
We fully support for example, we need to cooperate with the Minister to work for a change of culture at the Department of Home Affairs. We do recognise that workers need lots of motivation, education, pressure, from all of us, including the trade union movement. We all must appreciate that Home Affairs must provide a service to the people. We do currently appreciate this. We have got to change the culture of Home Affairs. We have agreed that it is the trade union movement that must lead this charge, supported by the Department of Home Affairs. The general problem facing the Department is the same thing that can be said about other service delivery departments. This is one concrete area of cooperation we have discussed.
Question: Minister Davies: Can you tell us about the pertinent issues you raised with Cosatu?
Answer: Minister Davies: We are in the late stages of the development of the industrial policy plan. We are finalising discussions with various stakeholders around this. So we engaged on the broad parameters around this. I think we got a generally positive response. Our overall approach is based on the view we need to make a more decisive step in the development of our industrialisation strategy. We are not yet at the point where we think we ought to be. There are a number of key issues we were able to raise, one being the issue of procurement. We have a number of proposals we will be putting forward on the procurement front so that a more significant proportion is procured from producers of local components and also the suppliers of quality jobs. This is one of our major approaches. We will be introducing quite a significantly changed industrial plan.
Enquiries:
Ronnie Mamoepa
Cell: 082 990 4853
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
24 November 2009
