POLICY BRIEF 24 - Internal Migration and the COVID-19 Policy Response in South Africa

Introduction South Africa is one of the most heavily urbanized countries in Africa with over 70% of the population living permanently or temporarily in towns and cities.1 It is also the most unequal society in the world with a Gini Coefficient of 63.0 in 2014.2 Both of these factors shaped the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country and many of its social and economic impacts. [...] A Country at War The South African policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic was framed by the Presidency and Cabinet in military language as a war against an unseen enemy.6 In its subsequent review of the policy challenges that confronted government, the Presidency noted that ‘South Africa ‘arguably implemented some of the strictest Covid-19 restrictions worldwide in the earlier stages of the pand. [...] The severe consequences of the rolling pandemic lockdowns for the national economy and the urban poor are well-documented.15 However, there have been only a few analyses of the impact of the pandemic on internal migrants and their geographically split households in both rural and urban areas or their access to government pandemic relief programs in 2020.16 The 700 page report on the pandemic issue. [...] The main policy-relevant findings include the following: • Migrants from the Eastern Cape leave for the two cities because of the lack of economic opportunity in that province and the prospect of working and earning income in the country’s major centres of productive activity. [...] Only 14% of the respondents in Cape Town and Johannesburg returned to the Eastern Cape during the lockdown, most electing to remain in the cities either by choice or because of the effectiveness of the policing of inter-provincial mobility and movement controls.