Tackling the European migrant crisis calls for objectivity, understanding, rationality and, above all, collectivity.
Those were not quite the qualities which Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba – the most senior person in government responsible for migration – brought to the debate this weekend.
In an article in the Sunday Independent, Gigaba launched a full broadside against the EU for its “lame-duck”, “blatantly racist”, “xenophobic” and “deficient” handling of the inflow of migrants from the Middle East and Africa.
The “Calais crisis”, as he called it, was also of the EU’s own making because of its responsibility for the Syrian and Libyan wars, Gigaba said. This was a strident polemic, not a constructive contribution to a solution. Of course, the EU needs to respond to the crisis as a region, not as individual countries.
But that’s easier said than done. It’s also true that the whole world needs to respond to the crisis collectively. For it is surely obvious by now that this is a global problem, requiring a global solution.
Most of the present migrants are fleeing the brutal civil war in Syria. But to lay the blame for that war entirely on the EU, as Gigaba does, is simplistic. Many others, including Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, who is still dropping barrel bombs on his people, are far more culpable. The EU’s role has been minimal.
Many of the migrants have been from Iraq and Afghanistan, which has prompted some commentators to call this a “regime change” migrant crisis, because of the largely Western military interventions in those countries which created the chaos that drove them out.
Gigaba would no doubt love the term. And yes, it contains some truth. But Syria does not fit that mould. And should Saddam Hussein and the Taliban not take some blame also for the brutality which invited regime change?
Going beyond the Middle East, to Africa, also a source of many of the migrants, should we not also be asking why their governments have made their home countries so repulsive to them?
It is fine for Gigaba to blame EU governments for the current chaos in Libya because of their military intervention, which toppled the brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
But governed Libya is largely just the launching pad for most of the African migrants fleeing to Europe. The migrants themselves come from many African countries, which are evidently failing them. And so, like the EU, the AU can also be criticised for failing to find a co-ordinated, collective response to the crisis.
Gigaba slams the EU for not seeking “constructive dialogue” with the AU to find a solution to the crisis. He seems unaware that AU and EU leaders are to hold a summit in Malta in November for that purpose. He might also have mentioned the recent demonstrations of welcome for the migrants in Germany and other EU countries.
When he compares the EU’s response to the migrant crisis unfavourably with South Africa’s response to its own migrant inflow, he walks on particularly shaky ground. For one thing, he fails to mention the xenophobia that has erupted here too, perhaps because his government has not recognised it as such.
He also reaches the conclusion that the ultimate solution for South Africa’s migrant problem is to promote the security and economic development of all African countries – that is, keep the migrants at home. Pretty much been the response of most EU countries too.
Perhaps the Malta summit – even if belated – will recognise that dealing with volumes of uninvited immigrants is not easy for anyone, and will go beyond the blame game towards a co-ordinated and constructive response to what is a global crisis.