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

“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.

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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.