The data black hole: South Africa cannot govern what it cannot see

AT SOUTH Africa's northern border, the crossings continue quietly, steadily and mostly unrecorded.

- NOMVULA ZELDAH MABUZA

While public debate often centres on the visibility of foreign nationals, the far more consequential peality remains largely neglected: South Africa has not conducted a comprehensive national audit of migration flows in over a decade. There is no integrated system tracking who enters, who stays or how movements across borders intersect with labour markets, infrastructure pressure or regional development.

This absence is not merely an administrative gap; it is an entrenched institutional blind spot that weakens governance, inflames public anxiety and erodes our credibility in a continent that is moving towards integration through data.

The Department of Home Affairs, along with other state organs, operates with fragmented or outdated systems. A biometric border management system, budgeted at R400 million between 2020 and 2023, remains partially deployed and disconnected from labour, policing and regional intelligence networks. As confirmed in the 2025 White Paper on Labour Migration, South Africa has yet to establish a functional labour market information system that connects cross-border movement data to national planning.

Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Surveys and Mid-Year Population Estimates offer no clear picture of undocumented populations. Civil society and academic estimates vary widely, from 2.5 to over 5 million undocumented migrants. In this vacuum, policies are constructed, services are stretched and myths are allowed to harden into assumptions.

The cost of not knowing is rarely borne by those in power. In practice, this sustained opacity benefits a wide range of actors. At Beitbridge alone, an estimated R690 million in smuggled goods passes annually, enabled by under-monitored crossings and document fraud. Informal labour markets, particularly in construction, agriculture and retail, absorb undocumented workers under exploitative conditions, displacing regulation and depressing wages.