Launched Strategic Plan Roadmap to Guide Dioceses on Migration, Human Trafficking in Botswana, Eswatini, South Africa

Johannesburg, 29 August, 2025 / 10:45 PM

Members of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) have unveiled a five-year strategic plan to help Episcopal Sees in the three-nation forum to address the challenges around migration and the human trafficking menace.

In an interview with the SACBC Communication Office on the sidelines of a two-day Annual General Meeting (AGM) on migration and human trafficking that concluded on Thursday, August 28, the SACBC Liaison Bishop for Migrants, Refugees and Human Trafficking urged Church leaders in Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa to be vocal in favor of marginalized groups.

“Like any department, we need a vision, a mission, and a plan. This five-year strategy is grounded in the pastoral cycle and informed by a SWOT analysis,” Bishop Joseph Mary Kizito said referring to the a strategic planning framework used to identify internal Strengths and Weaknesses, and external Opportunities and Threats of individuals and entities.

Bishop Kizito added, “We looked at our Strengths, our Weaknesses, our Opportunities, and our Threats and above all, we asked: what does the Gospel and the Synodal Church say about migrants?” 

In the interview published on August 27 on the sidelines of the AGM held at the Padre Pio Retreat and Conference Centre in Pretoria, the Local Ordinary of South Africa’s Catholic Diocese of Aliwal described the Strategic Plan as a roadmap to guide Dioceses across the SACBC region.

“Human trafficking happens in our own communities, through social media, through false job offers. Unemployment makes our young people vulnerable. We as the Church must raise awareness, be vigilant, and work with others to stop it,” he said.

Bishop Kizito went on to raise concerns about growing reports of migrants and refugees being denied access to healthcare in public facilities.

“It is not the policy of the government to deny people the basic rights of health and education,” he observed, and lamented, “This exclusion has been hijacked by politicians for their own agenda.”

In the interview with Sheila Leocádia Pires, the SACBC Liaison Bishop for Migrants, Refugees and Human Trafficking also spoke about the AGM of the Local Ordinaries in Botswana, Eswatini, and South Africa that was organized under the theme, “Migrants, Missionaries of Hope”.

The SACBC AGM that brought together 46 Diocesan pastoral agents from South Africa, Botswana, and Eswatini sought to strengthen pastoral strategies in response to migration challenges and the growing threat of human trafficking, Bishop Kizito said.

The SACBC AGM, he further said, aimed at empowering Diocesan pastoral agents and to not only “care for migrants, but to walk with them” in a synodal spirit, as “migrants and refugees also have a lot to say, a lot to share, a lot to enrich the hosting country and the hosting communities.”

He called for stronger collaboration with the migrants and refugees, saying, “We cannot do this alone.”

“We must work with other churches, with the government, with civil society. If we stand together – Bishops, Priests, Religious, Laity – we can respond to xenophobia, human trafficking, and statelessness with compassion and courage,” the Ugandan-born Catholic Bishop said.

In walking together with the migrants and refugees in the spirit of synodality, Bishop Kizito said, “We are not doing things for them, but with them.”

He said that the AGM also sought to examine the rising challenge of human trafficking, noting that South Africa has become a recruitment ground, a transit hub, and a destination country.