The The Democratic Costs of South Africa’s Zimbabwean Exemption Permit Process

Abstract

The Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP) process is most often analyzed through the lens of migration and the justice of South Africa’s treatment of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. This discourse focuses on critically important issues yet remains incomplete in two important ways: first, it fails to interrogate the impact of the ZEP policy and process on South Africa’s citizenship regime; and second, it does not connect the governance failures of the ZEP process with wider questions of democratic governance. In this article, I respond to these gaps, using a lens of democratic citizenship theory to analyze the ZEP process, as outlined in key public documents: public court documents in the case of Helen Suzman Foundation v Minister of Home Affairs and Others (Case 32323/2022), minutes of relevant parliamentary committee meetings recorded by the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), and public statements by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). I argue that this analysis reveals a concerning lack of commitment by the DHA to the core democratic values of political equality, political representation, and the ability to plan and live a life according to one’s conception of the good. This is evidenced in both the content and articulation of decisions within the policy process and the failures of democratic governance evident in the ad hoc decision-making, poor communication, shifting narratives, and a lack of public consultation.