30/06/2026
SOUTH AFRICA TODAY: THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT PROTESTS, OR ARE THEY?
South Africa has a real immigration problem: weak borders, corrupt officials, failing Home Affairs systems, illegal labour practices, hijacked buildings, crime syndicates, overcrowded public services and deep unemployment. No honest person should dismiss citizens who feel abandoned.
But to those supporting these marches: your pain is real. Your unemployment is real. Your fear of crime is real. Your anger at government is justified. But do not allow politicians, criminals and opportunists to turn your pain into hatred of fellow Africans.
South Africa was not liberated so that black people could terrorise other black people in the streets. The Zimbabwean mechanic, Malawian gardener, Mozambican builder, Congolese refugee, Somali shopkeeper and Nigerian trader are not the architects of South Africa’s suffering. Many are victims of the same African crisis: broken states, failed economies, colonial borders, corruption and leaders who betrayed their own people.
South Africa must fix immigration and punish crime. But it must not lose its soul. When poor Africans fight poor Africans, the real thieves clap from a distance.
ON THE STREETS
The current anti-immigrant campaign, linked to March & March, Operation Dudula, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, Ngizwe Mchunu and Nkosikhona ‘Phakel’uMthakathi’ Ndabandaba, has pushed South Africa into a dangerous moment. The 30 June deadline created fear, shutdowns, evictions, business closures and panic among migrants, including some legally in the country. Reuters reported disrupted transport, deaths, displacement, property damage and more than 100 vigilante-related criminal cases.
This is now a national security issue, a diplomatic issue and an African family crisis.
WHO MUST ENFORCE THE LAW?
The issue is not whether South Africa must enforce immigration law. It must. The real question is who must enforce it.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was clear that ‘only authorised government officials may act’ against immigration-law violations. No ordinary person may confront someone in the street and demand proof of nationality.
Marching is lawful. Demanding border control is lawful. But stopping people in the street, checking documents, blocking clinics, evicting tenants, threatening families, looting shops or forcing people to leave is not activism. It is lawlessness.
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma’s March & March says it wants illegal immigrants to leave and government to enforce existing laws. Gayton McKenzie captured the frustration of many when he said South Africa is ‘not a refugee camp for Africa’. Herman Mashaba and others are correct that illegal immigration must be addressed, but numbers and language matter. Mashaba’s old claim of 15 million undocumented foreigners has been fact-checked as unsupported. False numbers can set communities on fire.
Julius Malema has taken the opposite moral line, saying: ‘I don’t want a vote that says to me, I must hate Africans for you to vote for me.’ He has warned that when mobs are done with foreigners, they may turn on South Africans from minority tribes. Reuters has already reported that some South African citizens have been mistaken for foreigners because of language, accent or appearance.
Jacob Zuma also presents a contradiction. As president in 2015, he said: ‘No amount of frustration or anger can ever justify the attacks on foreign nationals.’ Yet today, reports around the MK Party and the ‘Mabahambe’ slogan place his political camp close to the same sentiment he once warned against.
DID YOU KNOW?
15 million or 30 million illegal immigrants in South Africa
False. Stats SA’s Census 2022 recorded about 2.4 million immigrants, around 3.9% of the population. Reuters later reported about 3.1 million migrants, around 4.1%. Illegal migration is a problem, but the country must use facts, not inflated figures.
Foreigners are responsible for most crime.
False. Some foreign nationals are involved in drugs, robberies, illegal mining, fraud and organised crime. They must be arrested, prosecuted and deported where the law allows. But available data does not show that foreigners commit most crime in South Africa.
Foreign nationals make up around 6% of prisoners, many for immigration-related offences. World Prison Brief gives a higher 2025 figure of 14.9%, which still means the majority of prisoners are South African.
South Africa’s crime crisis is deeper: local gangs, drug syndicates, illegal guns, taxi violence, corrupt police, weak prosecutions and organised crime networks involving both locals and foreigners. If undocumented migrants left tomorrow, r**e, drugs, robberies, hijackings and corruption would not disappear.
Foreigners are stealing all the jobs.
South Africa’s unemployment is devastating. Stats SA reported unemployment at 32.7% in Q1 2026. But migrants did not create this crisis. The World Bank found that immigrants in South Africa had a positive impact on local jobs and wages, estimating that each immigrant worker generated about two jobs for South Africans through business activity.
Yes, there is job competition. Migrants are visible in domestic work, construction, agriculture, restaurants, security, spaza shops and informal trade. But the honest question is: who is employing them, who pays below minimum wage, and why is the poor worker chased while the employer escapes?
LET’S BE REAL
If this campaign were purely about illegal immigration, every undocumented foreigner would be treated the same: European overstayers, American overstayers, white Zimbabweans, foreign investors, wealthy foreigners in gated estates and undocumented workers on farms, in hotels, restaurants and suburbs.
But the visible anger is directed mainly at poor black Africans: Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans, Nigerians, Congolese, Basotho, Somalis and others. European businesses are not being surrounded by mobs. White foreigners are not being stopped in restaurants and asked for passports.
That is why this is not only xenophobia. It has strong traits of Afrophobia — black Africans turning on other black Africans while other races are treated politely, ignored or protected.
When a poor African sells tomatoes, he is called illegal. When a foreign corporation extracts wealth, it is called investment. If this is truly about law, let the law apply equally to everyone.
WHO IS THE PIMP ON THE STREETS
There is legitimate anger. But criminality is hiding inside that anger. It is criminal to loot shops, assault people because of nationality, evict tenants without a court order, block access to healthcare, impersonate immigration officials or demand documents from people in the street without authority.
But it is also criminal for officials to sell documents, for employers to exploit undocumented labour, for landlords to profit from overcrowded rooms, and for syndicates to use migrants as disposable foot soldiers.
South Africa has been here before. In 2008, more than 60 people were killed in xenophobic violence, including South Africans and foreign nationals. First the anger targets ‘illegal foreigners’, then legal migrants, then South Africans who ‘look foreign’, then businesses burn, families flee and South Africa’s name is dragged across Africa.
After all that, unemployment remains, corruption remains, broken clinics remain and pain is simply transferred from one poor African body to another.
The biggest beneficiaries are not poor South Africans. Political opportunists benefit because immigration anger is a powerful election weapon. Criminals benefit because looting hides inside protest. Exploitative employers benefit because the worker is blamed while the boss escapes. Corrupt officials benefit because attention shifts away from bribery, fake documents and failed border systems.
There are rumours about foreign funding, destabilisation, Western Cape secession, KZN separatism and Israel’s possible involvement as revenge for South Africa’s Gaza case at the ICJ. These claims must be investigated if evidence exists, but suspicion is not proof. No credible public evidence currently proves that Israel is funding or directing this unrest.
The losers are poor South Africans, poor African migrants, township economies, South African businesses abroad, African unity and the rule of law.
MY TWO CENTS
South Africa needs a firm but lawful immigration reset.
Government must enforce immigration law itself. No civilian document checks. No clinic blockades. No illegal evictions. No forced removals. No intimidation.
Home Affairs must be cleaned up through faster asylum decisions, biometric verification, border technology, anti-corruption arrests and public dashboards showing real migration numbers.
Employers must be targeted. Any employer hiring undocumented workers illegally or paying below the law must face heavy penalties. Do not only chase the desperate worker; punish the person profiting from desperation.
South Africa must publish truthful statistics on migrants, deportations, asylum backlogs, prison populations, labour inspections and service pressures. The country must work with SADC and the African Union on legal migration channels, return agreements, border co-operation and economic recovery in sending countries.
Most importantly, citizens must redirect their anger upwards. The enemy is not the poor African selling vegetables. The enemy is corruption, unemployment, crime, failed governance, greed, lawlessness and political manipulation.
AFTER ALL
South Africa is angry because South Africa is wounded. But wounded people must be careful not to stab the person bleeding next to them.
The real battle is not South African versus Zimbabwean, Zulu versus Malawian, Xhosa versus Nigerian, or township citizen versus refugee.
The real battle is people versus corruption. People versus unemployment. People versus criminal syndicates. People versus failed leadership. People versus lies. People versus those who profit from division.
South Africa must enforce the law, but lawfully. Secure its borders, but humanely. Protect citizens, but without destroying African unity. Punish crime, but not criminalise entire nations.
We must fix the country without destroying each other.
Because when poor Africans fight poor Africans, the real thieves clap from a distance.
Hopewell Chin'ono
