Sword cuts both ways, Gigaba

Migrants hang onto a flotation device during a rescue operation 16km off the coast of Libya. Libya is largely just the launching pad for most of the African migrants fleeing to Europe, says the writer. File picture: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Migrants hang onto a flotation device during a rescue operation 16km off the coast of Libya. Libya is largely just the launching pad for most of the African migrants fleeing to Europe, says the writer. File picture: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Published Sep 14, 2015

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Home Affairs minister Malusi Gigaba walks on shaky ground when slamming the EU over migrants, says Peter Fabricius.

Pretoria - 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 the government charged with 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.

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 for 27 different countries.

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 indiscriminate 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.

This 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 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.

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 public demonstrations of welcome for the migrants in Germany and other EU countries.

When Gigaba 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 sometimes erupted here too in response to the immigration, perhaps because his government has not recognised it as such.

He also urges a whole government approach to migration which has not happened, when you consider the hostility of many police officers to migrants here.

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 – ie, keep the migrants at home.

That’s pretty much been the response of most EU countries too.

And they have been sharply criticised for it by pro-immigrant commentators, who see it as just another way of trying to keep the migrants at bay.

Perhaps the Malta summit – even if belated – will recognise that dealing with large volumes of uninvited immigrants from other countries 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.

Pretoria News

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