• On developing countries

On developing countries

Local government is finally beginning to examine the issues around cross-border migration with several metro municipalities in South Africa recently developing independent policies related to migrants and refugees. However policies are quite limited and are usually based  on the opinion that there is self-evident connections between migration and service provision ie that migrants have a strong negative impact on local service provision.

This report addresses this issue by examining the results of an empirical study of local government service provision in Nkomazi Municipality, Mpumalanga, bordering Swaziland and Mozambique. It documents the extent to which local government structures and local offices of national line agencies took cross-border migration into account when planning service provision, and analysed some of the structural implications of not taking migration into account.

It suggests that local governments have a crucial role to play in migration management and that active managing migration is, in turn, crucial to the effective provision of services by local governments. It suggests that management should refer to the active consideration of migration and migrants in all aspects of local government planning and service provision. In effect, it means recognising migration as an integral, rather than exceptional, aspect of local communities.

The report offers a series of recommendations including:

Municipalities:

• Mainstream cross-border migration into all aspects of local development planning, including the IDP
• Ensure training for all municipal officers in charge of service planning on different kinds of migration, including different legal statuses such as permanent residents, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants
• Develop local information sources on population statistics, including information from other government departments, rather than relying exclusively on outdated and inaccurate national statistics as the basis for service planning.

National Department of Provincial and Local Government:

• Support local initiatives in border areas such as Nkomazi to creatively provide services in border areas
• Oh behalf of border municipalities, lobby the Department of Home Affairs to enable
  long-term resident non-citizens living in South Africa (especially former Mozambican
  refugees) to access South African identity documents for themselves and their
  children
• Advocate for a more concrete implementation of the SADC Local Government Forum.

Department of Home Affairs

• Join a regular local forum for municipal officials and line agencies to meet and
  exchange information on migration-related information and interventions
• Work with the Department of Education to enable residents of the border area to apply for study permits locally rather than having to apply for them in their respective capital cities.
  

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend