Andrew Stegmann

Special Report: In South Africa, immigration feeds corrupt officials and race hate

JOHANNESBURG, March 22 (Reuters) – In 2010 police in Johannesburg shot Justin Ejimkonye, a Nigerian migrant, in the leg. The reason why is unclear: It took the police 18 months to charge Ejimkonye with any crime. When they did bring a charge, saying he was carrying cannabis, a public prosecutor decided not to pursue the case for lack of evidence.

The Nigerian says police shot him because he refused to pay them bribes.

Similar claims of police corruption are echoed by hundreds of immigrants in South Africa. Some are resigned to paying out so they can stay in the country. Others feel powerless to act. But over the past seven years, Ejimkonye, who says he is in the country legally, has refused to keep quiet. Now he is pursuing a civil claim for damages. He says law enforcement and immigration officials have continued to brutalise and wrongfully detain him. A high court has twice ordered the police to set him free.

“I still think every day they will come for me,” said Ejimkonye, 31. “I’m fighting for my life.”

The Nigerian, who walks with a limp, is suing South Africa’s minister of home affairs, the local government, a police officer and an official at the Department for Home Affairs for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages as a result of this alleged maltreatment. His case has been filed at a Johannesburg high court and is due to be heard in August. It is a fresh challenge to the misrule and abuse that even the government sees in South Africa’s immigration system.

“This is an important case and the evidence is extensive and conclusive,” said Bulelani Mzamo, Ejimkonye’s attorney. “A lot of people in authority are in deep trouble.”

National police declined to comment on the case; the police investigatory body said it had not been informed about it. Told of the case by Reuters, Mayihlome Tshwete, a spokesman for Home Affairs, said he would look into it. Tshwete said the problems it highlights were “systemic” in the past but are improving under Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, who was appointed in 2014 and has launched a drive against corruption, arresting tens of officials in his department on corruption charges.

South Africans worry that foreigners are taking their jobs and creating crime, and migrants say the immigration system is failing. The same forces that send West Africans to Italy are driving sub-Saharan Africans – nearly half of them from Zimbabwe – into the continent’s richest state. South Africa rejects 95 percent of asylum applications as unjustified. But so far, it has been unwilling to deport those migrants. It houses more than a million people with temporary residence permits who are unsure what is going to happen to them.

That has fostered extortion. More than 20 refugees or migrants interviewed by Reuters said they had suffered corruption and worse at the hands of police and immigration officers. A 2015 report by Lawyers for Human Rights and the African Centre for Migration & Society, two NGOs, found one-third of immigrants experience corruption at South African refugee registration offices. Another report, published last November by NGO Corruption Watch, found more than 300 foreigners complained of extortion, threats and solicitation from government officials. President Jacob Zuma said last month a system of “bribes for permits” poses a serious security risk for the country.

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Andrew Stegmann

South Africa asks World Bank to review ease-of-doing-business position in light of InvestSA initiative

The South African government has officially launched a new investment facilitation service, dubbed InvestSA, which it claims will dramatically reduce red tape for foreign and domestic businesses seeking to pursue greenfield or brownfield projects in the country.

The service, which has both physical and virtual dimensions, is punted as a one-stop shop facility, bringing under one umbrella the various government departments and agencies investors deal with to secure the permits, licences and incentives required to facilitate their investments.

The national office, located at the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) Pretoria Campus, was officially inaugurated by President Jacob Zuma on Friday, with three provincial offices to be rolled out in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Nataland the Western Cape later this year.

Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies says the one-stop shop was conceived together with the Presidential Business Working Group in 2015 and is a direct response to ongoing appeals from business for government to streamline the bureaucracy associated with investing in the country.

Besides the DTI, the national one-stop shop will house senior officials from the departments of Home Affairs, Labour and Environmental Affairs, as well as Eskom, the South African Revenue Service and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission.

It will offer specialist advisory services to investors relating to South Africa’s economic, regulatory and legislative environment, while also showcasing the industrial financing incentives available.

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Andrew Stegmann

Tanzania’s power play

With a president cultivating a no-nonsense reputation and an economy set to be supercharged, Tanzania is making sure its voice is heard throughout the region. 

 You are on holiday. Perhaps in Kenya’s Maasai Mara game reserve. The thought occurs: How about crossing to the world-famous Serengeti, on the Tanzanian side? Foiled … The switch won’t be easy, requiring a five-hour detour, another visa and a new set of immigration rules. 

For nearly four decades now, Tanzania has maintained a blockade of ­Bologonja, a border crossing between the Maasai Mara and Serengeti. It claims access for mass tourism could harm the ecosystem of the world heritage site, which “harbors the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world,” according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. 

But ever keen to do business and tap its tourism potential, Kenya sees this differently. It argues that its southern neighbor is out to make business unsustainable for Kenyan tour operators who ferry curious visitors eager to witness wildebeests on the march.

What you are witnessing are age-old rivalries, so bitter they have defied a wave of economic integration slowly sweeping across the continent. 

And they are just two of many regional disputes involving Tanzania that have earned the country a reputation as a spiky neighbor.

Voicing a popular view, Uganda’s minister for general duties Tarsis Kabwegyere said in February on a television talk show: “The political class in Tanzania is not yet attuned to regional integration.”

‘Coalition of the willing’

During March 2016 talks with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, he and Tanzania’s President John Magufuli agreed to form a joint ministerial commission to resolve outstanding issues related to the Maasai Mara-Serengeti conflict. Yet Tanzanian foreign minister Augustine Mahiga, who was selected to chair the commission, has not held a meeting since. “Tanzania is looking beyond traditional tourism,” says Mahiga.

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Andrew Stegmann

NIGERIA | Pro-Business Plan Expands Visa-on-Arrival and Permissible Business Activities

NIGERIA | Pro-Business Plan Expands Visa-on-Arrival and Permissible Business Activities
As part of Nigeria’s recently announced 60-day action plan to improve its international business climate, the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) has announced the expansion of its visa-on-arrival scheme to accommodate business travelers whose home countries have no Nigerian consular post. Traditionally, business visas are applied for through the Nigerian overseas missions; but in cases where the applicant resides in a country with no Nigerian consular post, the process of applying through a Nigerian consulate in a neighboring country can prove to be expensive and inconvenient.

Effective immediately, the NIS has made visas-on-arrival available to “frequently travelled business persons of international repute” and “executives of multi-national companies” from countries with no Nigerian consular post. Those foreign nationals may apply for visas-on-arrival, valid for a single 14-day stay, at the port of entry. While the visas are issued upon arrival, applicants must arrive already holding a “visa on arrival approval letter” obtained for them by an in-country sponsor. According to the NIS website, requests for the required approval letters will be processed within two working days.

Also, to further accommodate business travelers to Nigeria, the NIS has expanded the definition of business activity permitted under the traditional 90-day business visas issued by the Nigerian overseas missions, as well as the new visas-on-arrival. The list of permissible business activities – in addition to the traditional attendance at meetings, conferences, and seminars – now includes negotiating contracts, sales activities, job interviews, training and research, purchasing and distributing Nigerian goods, attending trade fairs, and emergency or relief work.

Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria is currently in its fourth consecutive quarter of recession, posting a 2.2 percent GDP contraction in the final quarter of 2016. While the slow-down is primarily due to the softening oil market, which is expected to rebound somewhat in 2017, economists have warned that significant government policy reform is sorely needed to restore consumer and business confidence and steer the economy back to growth. Hopefully, the current 60-day action plan and these corporate mobility improvements are just the start of more needed pro-business reforms.