Temba Masilela

	The xenophobic attacks in South Africa highlighted the need for policies on migrants to reflect the history and perspectives of migrants if they are to lead to community action. Temba Masilela, executive director of Policy Analysis at South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council, makes the case for policies which take people along with them.

In public commentary in the weeks following the attacks it was disconcerting to hear the long list of public policies, practices and circumstances that were said to have contributed to and exacerbated matters – past migrant labour policies, current immigration and refugee policies, weak border controls, the hiring of seasonal farm workers, unemployment, quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe, inequitable housing policies, the issuance of identification documents, the provision of social security, corrupt policing, the proliferating informal urban settlements, competition for scare resources, crime, and a disconnected government that no longer listened to the anguish or comprehended the anger of millions of people living in poverty.

As someone who had spent 13 years in the South African public bureaucracy crafting particular policy positions and had occupied a front row seat during the period of a massive post-apartheid overhaul of public policy -- this long list of alleged policy failures was unsettling. The more I thought about matters the more this began to overshadow strategies of anonymity and ambiguity. I soon concluded that I was implicated in the frightening “not-in-my-name” events that were taking place in far away townships in the home country of my return.

I had started my professional life as a journalist and worked in the areas of public management reform and social policy when I returned to South Africa. Later as a special adviser I earned my keep by writing numerous carefully researched, considered and crafted policy speeches so escaping my share of responsibility for deficiencies in policies and how they are communicated would be difficult.

There were other reasons that made this difficult. Although I had always accepted Easton’s 1953 definition of the public policy process as a “narrative about the authoritative allocation of values and resources”, it was slowly dawning on me and my colleagues that we had not thought through the full implications of the definition. The ‘authoritative allocation of values and resources’ part of the definition had just become clear. The deep, without-hope-anger that had erupted into inhumane xenophobic attacks clearly had a lot to do with human values and competition for scarce resources. The only remaining question was whether in performing our roles as policy interpreters, message designers, information brokers, and branding specialists we had given sufficient thought to the first part of the definition -- the part about the public policy process being first and foremost a narrative.

As the events and images of May 2008 unfolded I couldn’t help asking what had been the relationships, plots and perspectives in the policy stories we had told? At the time everyone who mattered said that our policy narratives resonated with our audiences. But if each policy document was in itself a narrative, were the everyday stories handed down from generation to generation not also full of questions – who, why, where, how, what consequences and costs, and who benefits? Wasn’t the joy of listening to a story in the waiting for the endlessly intriguing answers to these questions? Upon reflection it was clear that our policy documents were not constructed as stories. The series of questions that should have held our stories together and given them coherence were often at best ambiguous. It was more often the case that they were totally absent.

Our policy narratives thus read as long lists of answers. To compound matters they often avoided being explicit about who would bear the consequences and costs of the policy. It was therefore not surprising that long after we had forgotten them, they resurfaced.

For the purposes of addressing the issue of xenophobia in South Africa, the Immigration Act of 2002 and the Immigration Amendment Act of 2004 illustrate the 'stand alone' deficiencies of legislation as a policy narrative. Context is taken as a given or presumed to be too controversial and thus not specified in the legislation. Yet instances of xenophobia can only be correctly understood if they take into account the lived experience and memories of the actors involved – experiences and memories inextricably tied to the long history of migration within the Southern Africa region to work in the mines of South Africa. The presence in South Africa of Africans from surrounding countries is not a new phenomenon. If the Immigration Act specified this context it would make the xenophobic attacks of 2008 more comprehensible in terms of a story line that highlighted the massively increased scale and uncontrolled nature of post-1994 migration into South Africa.

Similarly, the Immigration Act would have greater utility as a policy narrative and have specific utility in helping to understand the xenophobic attacks of 2008 if it referenced the 1995 “amnesty offer” of permanent residence made by the government of South African to all foreign mineworkers who had provided at least 10 years of service in South African mines. Many foreign mineworkers did not take up the offer of permanent residence because they had no intention of uprooting themselves permanently from their home countries. By not referencing this fact and these preferences the Immigration Act as a policy narrative did not contribute to managing public expectations or fears. Because we encounter them as 'stand alone' pieces of public policy, polices like the Immigration Act are deficient because they lose sight of the fact that public policies are stories, stories about the allocation of resources and values. A story has context, actors, relationships, a plot, different points of views, and an ending – not always a happy one.

In addition, a good story is a call to action and policy should be that too. It should not just speak to me as a potential employer of an illegal foreigner. It should also refer to my responsibilities as citizen vis-à-vis the rights of a foreigner.

Because of countless nights spent around a fireplace no one should have needed to tell us that our policy narratives or stories would need to be re-told many times over. But in our professional lives we had somehow forgotten this and our policy documents were not crafted to be lovingly retold. Our policy narratives did not contain recognizable and archetypal characters that had or could be given names. Our stories were impersonal and told in a consistently flat tone. They weren’t just abrupt and to the point, they started with a conclusion and never elaborated upon this conclusion. They were linear in intent and construction and designed to indicate that all discussion was now closed. By design, the space in these narratives for communicating was severely restricted. We did not realize that our policy narratives had been clothed in straitjackets.

The absence of intrigue in our policy narratives was the most difficult part to explain. We had all had front row seats and were often party to the almost endless political and bureaucratic intrigue that accompanied policy development. Not to mention the special interests carrying carefully counted brown envelopes and the corresponding shifting alliances that seemed to almost define policy development processes. Yet our end products, the resultant policy documents and narratives, were stripped of all intrigue. No wonder frontline bureaucrats found them useless as guides to action and in many cases didn’t even bother to try to implement them.

Another area where we have forgotten that our policy processes and documents are narratives is the requirement for a suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy and learn from a story. In drafting policies and in resolving disputes about interpretation we always insisted upon literal translations – done in the here and now, in the disorienting glare of the mid-day sun. Alternatively, we have operated on the basis of a false hope that the suspension of disbelief in our policies would last for decades -- hopefully long enough to undo centuries of oppression, discrimination and state orchestrated attempts at systematic de-humanization. No wonder the episodes of 2008 seem to have come upon us so quickly. (END/2008)