Fortress South Africa: Governance of Mobility and Migration Control in South Africa

Europe is notoriously known as ‘Fortress Europe” given its fight to combat unwanted migration into its member states through it border agency FRONTEX. A number of African countries are following this path of tightening their borders, building fences and control those admitted into the country. South Africa is one of such country, gaining the title of ‘Fortress South Africa.’ This paper explores how South Africa has come to be known as Fortress South Africa, and the various forms of migration control and governance in a bid to mitigate entry into the country and to combat undocumented migrants amongst African migrants based in South Africa. Based on research carried out amongst Ethiopian and Cameroonian migrants living in Cape Town South Africa, I explored how migrants navigate and negotiate South African borders despite the tight border control, following their trajectories of evading the law and ways of regulating their stay. I maintain that mobility and migration have taken unprecedented levels as a result of the dynamic nature of migration making South Africa unable to adequately monitor the mutating forms of migration causing its inability to comprehensively police their borders.