Two months after its official launch, the Border Management Authority (BMA) made South African headlines. On 3 December, it announced that it had successfully thwarted the (alleged) trafficking of hundreds of Zimbabwean children at the Beitbridge border. In a press conference, the commissioner of the BMA, Dr Michael Masiapato, provided details of a “sting operation” between the BMA, Home Affairs anti-corruption unit and the SAPS which had resulted in intercepting more than 40 buses transporting 443 unaccompanied children under the age of eight years. He said not all details of the case had been determined yet, but the BMA media statement was clear: The children were “being trafficked into South Africa.” In fact, its Twitter account advised that “#ThisIsTheBMA at WORK!!!!” (their emphasis).

Subsequent media headlines announced how trafficking had been “foiled” and “blocked” and young children “rescued” in the nick of time. Yet few questioned how the BMA could determine so quickly that this was a case of trafficking. Also, oddly, the number of children trafficked in the incident far exceeds any annual statistics of trafficking incidents and arrests in South Africa. 

In popular discourse, the case was taken as fact: The BMA had successfully prevented a gross violation of human rights and made South Africa (and Zimbabwe) safer through its pro-active control of borders.

We encourage more wary engagement with this issue.

Operation Dudula members protest outside the Department of Education offices in Parow, Cape Town, while hundreds of parents queue to register their children on 17 January 2023. The group was advocating for the prioritisation of South African teachers and pupils in public schools. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

Political context and migrants as scapegoats

The context of the incident is informative:

During the October launch of the BMA – the third armed force in South Africa after the SANDF and SAPS – President Cyril Ramaphosa noted: “A more secure border is important for curbing illegal migration, human smuggling and trafficking. It will help in combating cross-border crime. […] One of these challenges is the increase in the number of undocumented foreign nationals entering our country. This has exacerbated many of the country’s social and economic problems.”  

Migrants are increasingly blamed for exhausting South Africa’s resources, thus deftly drawing attention away from the real problems of service delivery: Government mismanagement, leadership failures and endemic corruption. Xenophobic sentiment in South Africa continues to build and to encourage hate. The recent registration of Operation Dudula  – a movement founded on the sole mandate of (violently) removing “illegal” foreigners from South Africa – as a political party symbolises the allure of anti-foreigner sentiment. Rather than challenge and sanction xenophobic sentiments and actions, the government allows it to flourish.  In the run-up to elections, the ANC must appear to take an unflinching approach to migrants and migration and some have suggested that this approach will be a key element in the 2024 polls.  

Read more in Daily Maverick: Anti-foreigner group Operation Dudula gets party registration green light

Against this background, the Department of Home Affairs’s White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection: Towards a Complete Overhaul of Migration Protection was released in November.  Based on false claims and poor logic, the central focus of the white paper is border control. It intends to show how serious the ANC is about controlling and restricting immigration, and this is partially premised on the success of the BMA.

With estimated costs of R10.8-billion in 2022/23 (increasing to R11-billion in 2025/26), the BMA is under pressure to show quick, tangible and popular results.

President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

Questionable facts and elusive definitions

Human trafficking is a grave human rights violation, and legal definitions and facts are key when determining whether this crime has taken place. The consequences are far-ranging.

The International Trafficking in Persons Protocol sets out three essential elements that must be satisfied before trafficking can be claimed: People who have been i.) moved or recruited (action), ii.) under false or coercive circumstances (abusive means) iii.) for the purposes of exploitation (exploitative purpose). Undisputed facts must support each element, while in the case of trafficking in children, abusive means do not need to be established. The BMA’s claimed rescue victory has not yet proven any of these elements, and we are doubtful that it can. 

There is often a quick jump to label ‘irregular’ movement as trafficking before the facts are clarified.

In various reports and interviews this last week, Masiapato and the BMA vacillated between stating trafficking as a fact and citing more caution by adding “alleged” to the crime. When pressed by Newzroom Afrika anchor Thembekile Mrototo about the BMA’s confidence in its trafficking claims, Masiapato noted that “various protocols” prohibited them from engaging the children on information about the incident and that they had handed over the children to the Zimbabwean authorities for “processing”. He admitted that they couldn’t ascertain the reason for the movement of the children.  

If those running the sting operation were convinced there was sufficient evidence that trafficking should be considered, they should have followed the provisions of South Africa’s comprehensive Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act. This provides clear processes to protect child victims, including an entry visa, so that they can be provided with support and the details of the case ascertained. Protective provisions for unaccompanied migrant minors were also set out in a case brought by the Aids Law Project in 2009, while recent research on unaccompanied and separated migrant children and trafficking victims further document what responses are needed. However, in this instance, the children were simply handed to Zimbabwean authorities even though they were already at the South African border. From a BMA perspective, this is less costly and cumbersome than providing services and support in South Africa, but is incongruent with correct procedure and practice.

Refugees and asylum seekers from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi camp outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Pretoria on 2 June 2022. They were seeking protection and repatriation to a country that accepts refugees, saying they could go back to their communities in South Africa because of xenophobic attacks. (Photo: Gallo images / Alet Pretorius)

Why crying ‘trafficking’ may harm and hinder

In our work as migration researchers and human rights advocates, we often encounter empty and dangerous claims about trafficking. “Empty” because there is often a quick jump to label “irregular” movement as trafficking before the facts are clarified and without considering the high prevalence of other kinds of movement across borders including smuggling. “Dangerous” because erroneous claims of trafficking misrepresent the realities of migration and this means there is a risk of missing other vulnerabilities other than trafficking and diverting attention and support services from actual victims of trafficking. Research has shown how trafficking sensationalism and fearmongering have far-ranging consequences for the assumed – as well as actual – victims of trafficking, for migrants in general and for the encroachment of state control over and securitisation of the movement of people.

With the deliberations over the cancellation or extension of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit this year, many Zimbabweans who usually go home for Christmas may have felt unable to risk leaving South Africa, in case they could not return. (Photo: Tariro Washinyira)

An alternative narrative?

Here we propose an alternative narrative that may not be as startling as current popular explanations and draws on feedback from our Zimbabwean networks:

Zimbabwean schools broke up on Friday, 1 December. Some pupils who may not have seen their migrant parents for many months (if not years) would have boarded buses to South Africa for a family Christmas. They may have been waved off by grandparents or other stand-in guardians who could not make the trip themselves, and who probably did not attain the necessary affidavits from the police since the process is complex and cumbersome. Other adults also making the journey would likely have been asked to keep an eye on the children on their way to Johannesburg or further south. Some of the children would have had parents or guardians waiting at Beitbridge to meet them, while others would travel directly to where their parents stay. With the deliberations over the cancellation or extension of the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) this year, many Zimbabweans who usually go home for Christmas may have felt unable to risk leaving South Africa – in case they could not return.

Then, the sting operation unfolded.

Faced with armed military officials, it is unlikely that the volunteer caretakers in the buses would have spoken up for the children. Violent xenophobia in South Africa, the increased securitisation of borders and the lack of necessary affidavits would silence even the most courageous commuter. We heard from one eyewitness to the incident: “[Officials] were shouting at the bus driver that the kids’ parents should come back from SA to get their kids by themselves and not use bus drivers to do that… we just passed by thinking it’s a bribe-asking gimmick.”

Officially, the BMA noted that none of the children was asked why they were on the bus or what they wanted. This means more than 400 terrified children – all under eight years – would likely have been removed from buses by people in uniform with guns and left to be dealt with by the Zimbabwean bureaucracy. Many relatives were probably frantically trying to locate their children and may face criminal sanction in future. This is echoed by the parents of children apprehended in similar cases.

Yet this rather mundane reading has been overlooked in the scramble for headlines and clicks, while it also does not serve government assurances that it is keeping its borders and its people secure. The daily strategies of working-class people to unite families within a cruel migrant labour system and to deal with cumbersome bureaucracy and with threatening authorities, do not help the broader political project of the BMA and South Africa’s strong-arm response to migration and globalisation.  

Our country and our public discourse are poorer if we accept sensationalist claims at face value. We – members of civil society and sceptical voters – should demand more rigour and evidence from the government, from public servants and from journalists, and hold them to account. The BMA should report back monthly to the public on the investigation’s progress, its findings upon conclusion and the total cost of the sting operation, while journalists should make their own, independent inquiries. Our democracy demands that. DM

Dr Marlise Richter is an associate researcher with the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at UCT and the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits. Dr Rebecca Walker is a research consultant with the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits. Sharon Ekambaram is the head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Project at Lawyers for Human Rights and a member of Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia.