Source: Reason, logic, facts die in clash with populists over migration
One of these was a 2025 meta-analysis that looked at 41 international studies and concluded that “immigration has a statistically significant positive impact on the economic performance of receiving countries” and that “immigration tends to reduce unemployment rather than increase it”.
Tshabalala asserted that this “makes economic sense” because migrants are not only workers but they are also “consumers, tenants, commuters, savers, borrowers, traders and entrepreneurs. They increase demand for goods while also contributing labour. They rent accommodation, purchase food, use transport, pay school fees, establish businesses and create employment opportunities. In many cases they fill skills shortages, strengthen commercial relationships and deepen links between the countries from which they originate and those in which they now live.”
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He continued that migrants also “contribute to public finances”, with the formally employed ones paying income tax while those outside formal employment contribute by paying VAT on their regular purchases.
“The argument that migrants weaken government’s ability to serve citizens is therefore not supported by available evidence,” Tshabalala argued.
Speaking at the same event, MTN chair Mcebisi Jonas took the same line, cautioning South Africans not to place the blame for their woes on migrants since this country’s “economic crisis is the product of weak growth, poor governance, inadequate education outcomes, infrastructure failures and structural inequality. If every foreign national left the country tomorrow, those problems would remain. In many respects they would become worse.”
For his part, Motlanthe told the gathering that the anti-migrant sentiment was “historically ironic” because “South Africa’s modern economy was quite literally dug out of the ground by migrants… Those migrants, or their forebears, helped build the economy that now debates their admission.”
The seminar, which was themed around migration in the wake of the heightened debate and sometimes violent outbursts on the subject in recent months, had lots of similar opinions being expressed by participants. These are sentiments you cannot argue with. They are all correct. That is what the facts say. That is what history tells us. That is the message that data conveys. And that is how logical people should interpret the facts.
But listening to these three leaders’ incisive comments, this lowly newspaperman just shook his head. Not in disagreement but in despair at the yawning gap in this migration conversation. “Dialogue among equals” is the overarching motif of the foundation’s public conversations, hosted around challenges facing the nation and the world at any particular moment. However, the conversation around migration has long ceased to be a dialogue among equals. One does not fault the three gentlemen or anyone else who has tried to talk sense on this subject, but the reality is that we are talking past each other. This is the kind of topic on which reeling out facts, statistics and historical perspective sounds like lecturing the ignorant masses.
One has heard activists, mostly from the left of the political spectrum, essentially talking to themselves as they tried to stem the wave of anti-foreigner feeling in the country. There have been well-researched papers emanating from institutes and respected academics putting forward the case as to why immigration is good for nations. Veterans of the liberation struggle have spoken about the international solidarity that contributed to South Africa’s liberation and our continent’s role in that effort. Contemporary activists try to sensitise the society to exploitative businesses taking shortcuts and encourage communities to rather focus on that rather than the exploited immigrants.
Sober politicians warn about the malign hand of those who manipulate online conversations and have succeeded in influencing elections and referendums around the world. Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, among others, has even suggested that there might be a country that is at the receiving end of South Africa’s International Court of Justice case that could be covertly involved in instigating the protests in order to weaken South Africa’s standing on the continent.
Solid arguments most of these might be, but they are just not landing. The voices of the populists are the ones being heard. When Stats SA says the estimated number of foreign nationals in South Africa – legal and undocumented – is only about three million, the populists put it variously at between 15 million and 30 million. The figure that flies is the latter, with these street statisticians leading people to believe they are being overwhelmed. When the crime stats and conviction rates show that South Africans are responsible for most categories of wrongdoing, the conventional belief that foreigners are responsible for most unlawful activity is the one that holds.
If you show that many foreigners possess blue-collar skills that our education system has failed us in, you are chased out of the town hall. There are countless more examples of incidents where disinformation and hyperbole trump fact.
So this is definitely not a dialogue among equals. There are two dialogues: one among the converted who are heard by the better-off in society and the other among the populists who reach the people most likely to be convinced by tales of their lives being upended by outsiders. Those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid are more likely to buy the tale that the long queues at public health facilities, the pressure on classroom placements, the unemployment rate and rampant crime are the result of outsiders encroaching on their space. But it does not stop there. Their (hard-) lived experiences are transmitted to their middle- to upper-class relatives and associates who then also perpetuate the myths. The catchphrase that elites do not understand because they live in leafy neighbourhoods then becomes a way of shutting off any reasoning.
Let’s accept: reason, logic and facts are the losers in this debate. They were the losers in the Brexit referendum that Tshabalala referenced in his speech as having cost the UK dearly in the years since the country left the European Union. If reason and logic were to have prevailed, Donald Trump would not have got any of his two terms in the White House, let alone achieve the runaway victory the second time around. The forward surge of right-wing parties in Europe would not be happening if citizens were listening to the logic of what awaits them if they head in that direction. Japan, which has an ageing population and whose economy desperately needs foreign labour, would not be embracing the ultra-nativist Sanseitō party that wants to limit the flow of migrants into the country.
There has to be a different approach to dousing these fires. It certainly can’t be ONLY about preaching to people about the benefits of migration, busting the myth about migrants taking their opportunities and crowding them out of services or being responsible for all that is bad in their lives. That just comes across as talking down to the masses and they will shut their ears. A new conversation has to have empathy for their feelings without pandering to xenophobic tendencies. We should do so without giving up on the facts. It will be a fine balance and will be a lot more difficult, but easy routes are for the populists. And they have already taken that easy route and are winning. DM
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