Johannesburg – ActionSA president and Joburg mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba has outlined a plan to address immigration and revitalise inner cities.
Mashaba was joined by mayoral candidates in Gauteng, Abel Tau from Tshwane, and Tlhogi Moseki from Ekurhuleni.
The party said this was to ensure the effective management of immigration, improve access to community safety resources and create an inclusive and enabling environment for jobs in cities for all.
Mashaba said South Africa was built by migrants from all walks of life, who continued to positively contribute to the richness of the country’s diversity.
“The effective management of migration and immigration within cities is key to delivering services for the betterment of all our residents, foreign nationals and South Africans alike,” Mashaba said.
"As part of our core mission, we are intent on revitalising our inner cities and creating vibrant, safe, clean and inclusive hubs where people from all walks of life can live, work and play."
— ActionSA (@Action4SA) October 20, 2021
- @HermanMashaba pic.twitter.com/mdw86f4gnf
Mashaba said: “It remains ActionSA’s steadfast belief that the failure and chronic mismanagement of our immigration system must be laid at the feet of the grossly incompetent ANC-led government, not foreign nationals. A large part of the problem with undocumented foreign nationals is our dysfunctional government.”
Mashaba said that many law-abiding foreign nationals (legitimate asylum seekers, refugees and workers with scarce skills) did everything to comply, but were failed by the incompetent and corrupt Department of Home Affairs.
To ensure effective immigration management in order to revitalise cities, Mashaba said his party would conduct inter-governmental operations to improve services to legal foreign nationals.
Welcome to Remington House in the Joburg inner city.
Today @HermanMashaba unveils our plan to address immigration, revitalise our inner cities, and return respect for the rule of law! pic.twitter.com/kzxMr6tn3T
“In this, we will work with the Department of Home Affairs and the SAPS to address illegal immigration while ensuring that legitimate asylum-seekers, refugees, and skilled migrants can legally and fully enjoy access to municipal services.
‘“We will no longer permit Home Affairs to hide their heads in the sand on this issue. Addressing this issue requires strong political will.
“We will address illegal immigration through inter-governmental relations, working actively with the Department of Home Affairs, the National Treasury and other relevant government entities to ensure that it is easier for skilled foreign nationals to enter our country legally, or to get protected legal status in order to contribute to the economy and create jobs,” Mashaba said.
He added: “Where the national government fails to deal with undocumented foreign nationals, we will lobby for additional grant funding and the delegation of powers to our municipalities so that we can do the work ourselves.”
Mashaba said his party would use data collection for accurate population growth modelling.
“Our municipalities will implement data-driven analytical forecasting to ensure that we can plan sufficiently for service delivery in the future. This will equally allow us to ensure that access to social services like clinics, libraries, and early childhood development centres is increased to accommodate increased urban population numbers.
“Fixing South Africa requires that we fix our metros by ensuring inner-city revitalisation,” Mashaba said.
Political Bureau