It gives me great pleasure to bear testimony to the work and deeds of Mr Gary Eisenberg. It is often difficult to believe anything complimentary said about someone else. However, credence can be given to compliments paid by an enemy or opponent. Mr Eisenberg and I have never been enemies, but we were cast by history
into the role of opponents. In our respective roles we both worked to forge our country's history. What I did for ten years in my former capacity as Minister of
Home Affairs might not be well known, but it is on record. This celebration offers us the opportunity to place on record Mr Eisenberg's contribution, which is
worth mentioning because of what he did for our country and the example it may set for the entire legal profession.

What I have to say would not be fully appreciated without a few introductory points of departure.

Mr Eisenberg has always been genuinely committed to the consolidation of the rule of law and the upgrading of our legal system as a means to improve
the overall matrix of our society. For this reason I have always respected him, for I share the same unwavering commitment to promote the rule of law as a means
to better our still highly flawed, imperfect and unjust society.

Mr Eisenberg chose the field of immigration law. I didn't; but I ended up with the responsibility of attending to it. When in 1994 I was given the portfolio of
Home Affairs, I found myself in a legal quandary, a policy vacuum and an administrative nightmare. This was the context in which the rights, duties and obligations
of people interfacing with our immigration systems had to be dealt with.

Our new democratic Constitution, both in its interim and final forms, had provided an extensive policy framework for most fields of government activity. This general policy framework was detailed in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, which gave direction to the various processes of policy formulation embodied
in the many green and white papers produced by our Government, which then formed the basis for legislative enactments. However, there was nothing in
the Constitution or the RDP which would give a direction towards deciding whether our country should have an open or closed door policy in respect of
immigration and how the entire matter should be structured and pursued.

In addition to the policy vacuum, there was no administrative infrastructure to support the immigration function. The pre-liberation South Africa had a
miniscule immigration function based on an ancient and arbitrary law which lent itself to being applied in such manner that most of those who qualified for
its benefits would be White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As liberation came, immigration was the only function which grew by a factor of 125 times, as millions of
people poured into South Africa as tourists, businessmen or workers and sought the benefits of immigration legislation.

There has been nothing like this in the other line functions, where the aggregation of the henceforth divided governments, including TBVC states and
self-governing territories, provided the same number of schools and classrooms for the same number of children, the same number of hospital beds and doctors
for the same number of patients, the same number of policemen for the same population base, and so on and so forth. They were confronted with the need
reprioritise and reallocate resources to overcome the disparities of apartheid, but started with an aggregate administrative basis which was generally adequate to do the job and with legislation which was generally adequate to support the administrative function, albeit it had to be changed to adjust to the new policies.

I took office in a context in which foreigners were looked upon with hostility. My Department saw its main role as that of keeping people out. The general rhetoric
was that foreigners exploited our scarce resources without providing any significant contribution, and were responsible for criminal activities. There were no
analytical tools, dedicated NGOs or research facilities to provide the methodology and processes to test these prejudices.

Into all this came Gary Eisenberg, armed with his faith in the rule of law and the provisions of the Constitution. He took me to court time and again, and time
and again he won. Entrusted as I was with the responsibility of executing the law then on the books, in the beginning I fought him and hoped to defeat him.
But then I realised the inequity of the law and, even though I was called upon to resist his actions, in my heart I supported them, while I began promoting
a comprehensive revision of the law.

One of the first legal problems was that the law governing migration control was secret. The Aliens Control Act contained only scant and enigmatic provisions,
while the actual law spelling out the criteria, requirements and provisions under which immigration permits could be granted were detailed in a 600 page
internal document called the Immigration Code or Consular Code. Any officer receiving it had to sign a statement swearing to keep it secret. Eisenberg challenged
the constitutionality of this practice and, in so doing, brought it to my direct attention.

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