Ronald Lamola had a clear message at Sunday’s government media briefing: migration cannot be fixed by pointing fingers at individual countries. South Africa’s International Relations and Cooperation Minister argued that the African Union’s migration debate must shift toward the structural conditions that push people across borders in the first place, and that any enforcement of immigration law must be carried out by the state, not by private groups acting outside it.
For the people caught in the middle of that debate, the stakes are immediate. Ghanaian nationals living in South Africa have faced violence linked to migration protests, and some individuals have been impersonating law enforcement and Home Affairs officials, a problem Lamola addressed directly after his recent visit to Accra as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Special Envoy. He confirmed that South African law enforcement agencies are actively investigating and prosecuting those responsible, with arrests already made for impersonation, looting and housebreaking. A murder case involving Ghanaian nationals remains under active investigation by the South African Police Service. “There is action and there is work. It is not a situation of impunity,” Lamola said.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/south-africa-backs-african-union-migration-talks-calls-continent-wide-approach.
His visit to Ghana was, by his account, constructive. President John Mahama and Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister received the delegation and engaged substantively, reaffirming ties rooted in both countries’ shared history of opposing apartheid. Ghana acknowledged South Africa’s right to enforce its immigration laws. Its concerns, Lamola stressed, were not about enforcement itself but about who was doing it. “The only issue that all of them do raise is that where there is a challenge of irregular and illegal, including undocumented immigrants, it must be dealt with in a human way. It must be dealt with by law enforcement, not private individuals and groups that are not mandated by the laws of that country,” he said.
That distinction matters. Across the continent, African governments have consistently recognized the sovereign right of states to apply their immigration laws. What they object to is extrajudicial action, and South Africa’s position is that it objects to it too.
Meanwhile, Lamola pointed to the continental frameworks already in place to manage migration more systematically. The AU Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Rights of Residence and Rights of Establishment, adopted in 2018 under Agenda 2063, sets out a coordinated approach for Africans to travel, work and live across the continent. It promotes stronger border systems and enhanced efforts to combat human trafficking. The Southern African Development Community has its own Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons, to which South Africa is a signatory, though full ratification by member states is still required before it becomes operational. Both frameworks insist on regular, orderly and legal movement. “Migration must be orderly, must be regular, and must also be legal, which is what the South African government has to do to ensure that migration is within the parameters of the law,” Lamola said.
South Africa receives more migrants than any other country on the continent, both regular and irregular. North African countries face their own substantial pressures as destinations and transit routes to Europe. None of that, Lamola argued, can be resolved without confronting the underlying drivers: economic hardship, unemployment, governance failures, peace and security deficits, and the growing effects of climate change across Africa. These are the conditions that compel people to move, and they are the conditions the AU debate should address.
He was direct about what that debate should not become. “This debate that is being called by Ghana should not be a debate of finger pointing, cheap political scoring against South Africa, labelling South Africa as this and that, because it will not be helpful,” he said. South Africa has said it would welcome a fact-finding mission by the AU, and the issue is expected to feature in discussions at the African Union Executive Council meeting beginning this week.
The question now is whether the continental conversation can move from accusation to architecture, building the shared systems that allow migration to be managed humanely and lawfully, rather than left to private actors filling the gaps that states have not yet closed.