Country Monographs: Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Historically, South Africa has relied on foreign migrant workers for its industrial and general economic development; this is especially true for the migration of workers from other parts of Africa (Davies and Head, 1995). In fact, the analysis of census data since 1911 has shown that about 6 per cent of the country’s population comprised non-South Africans from the region. In 1961, for example, there were 836,000 regional migrants in the country (Peberdy, 1997). Meanwhile, consistent with the racist orientation of the country’s immigration policy, the government welcomed whites from neighbouring states in Southern Africa who felt threatened by black majority rule (Crush, 2000). Between 1960 and 1980, for instance, skilled and semi-skilled white migrants from Zambia, Kenya and Zimbabwe were given citizenship to boost the local ‘white’ population (Peberdy, 1997). It was within this context of South Africa’s conflicting immigration regimes that Crush and McDonald (2001) noted that the country’s twentieth-century immigration policies under white rule were racist,¹ exploiting migrant labour from neighbouring countries and repudiating international refugee conventions.