ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IMPASSE: BLAME IT ALL ON PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION!

The ongoing impasse between the government and grassroots organisations like March and March regarding the issue of illegal immigrants should be blamed on the Proportional Representation Parliamentary system that has been adopted in this country via bogus means.

Proponents of this system are quick to point out that this system gives the young, the disabled, the downtrodden and women a chance to also be members of the National Assembly (Parliament), where the country’s laws are made.

But the glaring flaw about this system is that it doesn’t give citizens of this country a chance to be represented in Parliament by people that they have elected directly in the constituencies they live in.

The Proportional Representation Parliamentary system allows political party leaders to arbitrarily choose and pick their own cadres, patrons and sycophants to be members of Parliament, leaving behind deserving community leaders with potential to be good Parliamentarians to always look on in frustration as the said party cadres, patrons and sycophants sit idle in Parliament; unable to articulate burning issues which affect grassroots communities that they come from.

This system is a direct contrast of the Constituency-based system, which gives communities the right to elect their own Parliamentary representatives and also to take an active role in directly voting for the country’s president.

The Constituency-based system allows communities the right to recall members of Parliament if they don’t deliver according to their expectations, unlike is the case under Proportional Representation whereby a party leader just wakes up in a foul mood and decides to remove certain people as Members of Parliament.

Under the Proportional Representation system, parties literally tell communities as to who their representatives in Parliament are.

I remember former President Thabo Mbeki announcing that his constituency was Winterveldt in Pretoria/ Tshwane.

This left me wondering as to what related Mbeki with the area as he was not born there in the first place and was not even an original resident of Tshwane/ Pretoria.

What I am driving at here is that the aforesaid impasse regarding illegal immigrants would have been avoided before it could rear its ugly head if South Africa was being ruled through the Constituency-based system because under the Constituency-based system the government would have long heard and been forced to acknowledge that communities at grassroots level actually detest illegal immigration which has been condoned by the government all these years.

And the government would have long been made aware that communities at grassroots level don’t believe in the sellout interpretation of the High Court/ Constitutional Court that has cruelly ruled that South Africa belongs to all people who live in it, including legal as well as illegal foreigners.

And yet again the government would have long been heard of dissatisfaction arising from the shortage of medication in clinics and hospitals, classrooms at schools and job opportunities which have been taken up by foreigners, both legal and illegal ones.

Now like perennial reactionaries, it is only now that some Members of Parliament want to hold a discussion regarding the issue of immigrants.

But their premise, as articulated by DA Chief Whip Glynnis Breytenbach, is biased as the intention here is to discuss the so-called xenophobia and the perceived “persecution of African immigrants.”

Attention is drawn away from the fact that many immigrants came into this country illegally in the first place; that they (the illegal immigrants ) are in and of themselves an active crime scene.

This very assertion is based on the fact that entering any country illegally is a crime, and continuing to live in the said country illegally is tantamount to continuing commiting a crime.

That’s why all illegal foreigners are an active crime scene.