Deportation of foreigners has worsened SA’s socio-economic situation: researcher - EWN

South Africa has spent almost R300 million repatriating foreign nationals, with nearly 90,000 people removed as part of the government's migration crackdown.

But a senior research consultant at the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University has said the numbers don't actually speak to either the success or failure of the strategy.

Dr Rebecca Walker told 702 that a strategy can only be deemed effective when it produces the outcome it was designed to.

The question that needs to be asked, she said, is 'what was the aim?'.

"If it was to reduce unemployment, that's unchanged, if not worse. If it was a more orderly migration system, we have less of one than we had before. We have burnt regional relationships. We've created our own crisis."

Walker said the government efficiently carried out the operation of removing people, but whether that operation actually solved the problem is a completely different question.

"If we're measuring success by just a number of removals, then we really need to look at what problem we were trying to solve and has it been solved?