REPORTS

In the Southern African region, South Africa has long been a country of destination for migrant workers, dating back to the discovery of diamonds and gold in the nineteenth century. During the apartheid period, a two gates policy was introduced for labour migration (Crush and Iturralde, 2022). The first gate was immigration of skilled and semi-skilled white workers and
their families from Europe). The second gate was the notorious temporary migrant labour system that brought unaccompanied black contract workers from the region to work on the South African mines and in commercial agriculture. This system of recruitment in the mining sector was governed by Bilateral Labour Agreements between South Africa and the main countries of origin, including Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique. After 1994, the South African Government began to close both gates. The racist white immigration policy was abandoned and the numbers of contract migrants from other countries has declined as the Government encouraged the companies to hire locally. The collapse of apartheid, the decline of mine recruiting, and the lack of job opportunities in other countries have led to a significant increase in women and men workers migrating regularly and irregularly to South Africa from all other SADC Member States. Work permits are generally denied to semi-skilled and low skilled labour migrants and their South African employers, so irregular migration and employment has grown in both the formal and informal economy. Since 1990, South Africa has deported over 1.5 million irregular migrants, mainly to neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho. Immigration policy reform is currently in a state of flux. In 2017, the Department of Home Affairs published a new development-oriented White Paper on International Migration with a strong skills-based emphasis and regional approach to immigration management. Despite Cabinet approval, the White Paper was never implemented for reasons that remain unclear but may be related to the resignation of the Minister in 2018. It was effectively overtaken by a new White Paper published in April 2024 by his successor which the government framed as a “complete overhaul” of immigration, refugee, and citizenship legislation. The 2024 White Paper focuses primarily on refugees and the purported “abuse” of the refugee system by irregular economic migrants and effectively abandons most of the 2017 framework. In May 2025, the Department of Employment and Labour published its first White Paper on a National Migration Labour Migration Policy. This White Paper makes no reference to the 2024 Home Affairs White Paper claiming, in effect, to be consistent with the framework in the 2017 White Paper. The new Democratic Alliance Minister of Home Affairs in the Government of National Unity (GNU) has publicly stated that the 2024 White Paper will be revisited for its alignment with the GNU’s priorities on economic growth and referred to a forthcoming Supplementary White Paper which may align more closely with the proposed National Labour Migration Policy framework. In this Review, we summarize all three White Papers to show the differences in their approach and recommendations.