Lesufi admits Gauteng government failed to properly manage immigration and demand
· Citizen
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has admitted that while strides have been made in the province, government has not properly addressed foreign immigration and demand.
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Speaking at the launch of the ANC’s election manifesto in Riverside, Diepsloot on Sunday, Lesufi said the ANC has improved the lives of many South Africans, despite several challenges.
Reflecting on his province, Lesufi admitted that those in power had underestimated the work needed.
“We underestimated the demand. The demand is massive.
“There’s no one who can accuse us of never building a single road. There’s no one who can accuse me of never building a single school, clinic, or hospital.
“There’s no one who can accuse us of not building a police station, or that we have not built a road, because the demand is huge,” he told broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
He said there are “two critical things” that he did not believe were managed properly.
“One is immigration, where other people from other provinces feel that the better province is Gauteng.
“Two is people that are coming from the continent who believe that they can be accommodated here.
“So the budgeting and the planning could not match that number of population growth, and that’s where we’ve made a huge mistake, and that is why you will see in this manifesto we want to arrest that situation.”
Migration
As the country’s richest province, Gauteng draws many in search of opportunities.
A 2025 StatsSA report on migration patterns showed Gauteng is projected to receive around 1.42 million migrants between 2021 and 2026. Most of these migrants came from Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and Mpumalanga.
The report found that more than a quarter of all South Africans now live in Gauteng. That number was more than 16 million people in 2025.
Foreign nationals
As a major economic hub on the African continent, South Africa has seen a large influx of foreign nationals for decades.
Stats SA’s analysis of, among other sources, the 2022 census found that more than 2.3 million foreign nationals live in South Africa, with most in Gauteng.
An earlier report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated the figure to be around 4.2 million (or 7.2% of the population).
One estimate, based on Stats SA projections in 2018, found an average of roughly 200,000 migrants entering the country each year.
Most immigrants come from the Southern African Development Community, a region of 16 countries surrounding South Africa that links it to other regions of the continent.
Among these SADC nations are Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.