Millions caught in limbo as southern Africa grapples with migration crisis

SADC leaders arriving in Durban this weekend face a question that no single government can answer alone: how to manage migration across southern Africa in a way that works for the millions of people caught between borders.

The summit, expected to focus on regional integration, economic development and migration, arrives at a moment of deepening friction between South Africa and its neighbours over how people move across borders. Statistics South Africa estimates between 2.4 million and 3.1 million foreign-born people live in the country, a reality that has sharpened public debate over jobs, healthcare, education and service delivery. These are not abstract policy concerns. They are daily pressures felt by communities across the country.

Yet the core problem, according to researchers, lies not in any single nation’s immigration enforcement but in the fragmented approach that 16 SADC member states have adopted toward movement across the region. Dr Margaret Monyani, executive director at the OLAM Africa Research Institute, argues that this patchwork of different regulations creates confusion for governments, employers and migrants themselves. “You cannot regionalise the problem but also nationalise the response,” she said in recent remarks.

Monyani emphasised that migration is fundamentally a regional phenomenon. People move through the same regional space, following established routes and networks that no single country can control. When one nation implements stringent regulations unilaterally, she explained, it does not stop movement. It forces migrants to find alternative routes. The solution, she contends, requires coordinated governance at the regional level rather than competing national systems that undermine each other.

By contrast, the political dimension of the crisis has received far less attention at the regional level. Thembisa Fakude, senior researcher at Africa Asia Dialogues, points to what he calls the “elephant in the room”: the governance failures within individual countries that push people to leave in the first place. These structural conditions, he argues, drive migration far more powerfully than any policy South Africa can implement on its own.

“We need to talk about those kinds of things. Those are the push factors that continue to push people to South Africa because at least here they can enjoy certain freedoms and economic activity that they ordinarily don’t get access to in their countries,” Fakude said.

That observation carries a direct implication for citizens on both sides of the border. South Africa attracts migrants not because of its immigration policies but because of relative stability, economic opportunity and freedoms unavailable elsewhere in the region. Enforcement, applied in isolation, does not remove those pull factors. It shifts the burden, often onto the most vulnerable people moving through the system, without resolving the underlying pressures that set them in motion.

The Durban summit represents a genuine opportunity for member states to move from isolated national responses toward coordinated regional action. That shift would require acknowledging that migration serves legitimate economic and social functions across the region, and that durable solutions depend on addressing both the management of movement and the conditions that make movement necessary. Whether this weekend’s gathering produces that kind of commitment, or settles for familiar declarations, is the question that will determine whether ordinary people across southern Africa see any real change.