Black African Migrants Are Not Responsible for South Africa’s Issues

I’ve frequently felt like an outsider in my own home.

My entry into this world wasn’t a subtle transition; it was a forceful emergence from the abundant, joyful realm of my mother’s womb.

Instead, I was thrown into a harsh reality filled with dust, hunger, and disappointment, my fragile little feet unequipped for the demands of a home birth.

My second departure took place in 1993 when I left my village of Habeni in Eshowe, northern KwaZulu-Natal, to study in Durban.

I was escaping pastoral responsibilities, the political influence of figures like Inkatha’s Gatsha Buthelezi, village labor, and the monotony of rural life.

By 1997, I was once again displaced, this time moving to Inanda, KwaDube, then an informal settlement.

I had lost my chance at higher education at the predominantly white Technikon Natal. Apartheid’s education had left me unprepared for future challenges.

During these transitions, I experienced homelessness more often than I’d like to recall, particularly in 1999 and again in 2001.

During both instances, it was not South Africans who extended their help; it was foreigners.

Ziggy, a fellow student from Namibia, offered me a place to stay in a flat in Durban called Corlo Court when I needed it most.

Percy, another Namibian, became like family to me.

I pitched in R100 for groceries while others (also from Namibia) covered the rest, stepping in where my own nation had neglected me.

Later, German taxpayers supported my journalism studies through the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung scholarship, awarded for academic merit and financial need.

At one moment, a white woman who struggled to pronounce ubuntu offered me shelter.

For this reason, the topic of migration resonates with me not merely as an academic debate or a policy document, but as personal memory.

It resonates as Ziggy making space for a struggling South African. It resonates as Percy sharing meals. It resonates with the painful acknowledgment that, at pivotal moments in my life, foreigners exhibited more ubuntu than my homeland.

And yes, it also includes Joe (not his real name), another Namibian in the same flat, who expressed xenophobic sentiments towards me.

He preferred to eat in his room and questioned why the South African government failed to support its needy citizens.

He resented me for eating his Namibian lunch.

It stung.

For a full year, I wrestled with the question: why couldn’t South Africa care for its poor?

Decades later, the question remains unaddressed. Instead, we see new players, slogans, marches, cameras, and targets without new ideas.

Fred Khumalo cautioned in News24 that anti-foreigner protests are a ticking time bomb that can still be deactivated.

I fear the fuse has already been lit.

In reality, those targeted are primarily Black Africans: Malawians, Mozambicans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, Ethiopians, Somalis, and as history shows, South Africans mistaken for them. Essentially, this is an escalated anti-Black agenda.

This is where Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma comes into play.

She is not the root cause of South Africa’s migration crisis.

She symbolizes a symptom of our ideological vacuum: a political void pretending to be civic action, a spectacle for cameras whose hollowness is overshadowed only by its self-assured claim to be the answer.

Her March and March movement claims it is not xenophobic. It asserts it aims to enforce immigration laws. That is acceptable.

A responsible nation must know who enters, who remains, who works, who qualifies for asylum, and who needs to be returned through lawful, compassionate means.

However, there’s a crucial distinction between managing migration and engaging in street theatrics.

There’s a difference between a constitutional state enforcing legal standards and crowds marching through neighborhoods, pointing fingers at Black African individuals, issuing threats, demanding documentation, and turning neighbors into suspects.

There’s a clear line between policy and performance.

When Ngobese-Zuma tells her followers that some label March and March a Zuma stokvel, and admits she doesn’t mind because she is a Zuma, she may see this as defiance.

It’s not; it’s an insight.

A national crisis devolves into family drama. Public fear becomes branding. Desperation turns into a performance.

She is not alone.

Herman Mashaba has built much of ActionSA’s political rhetoric around “anger” directed at undocumented foreigners.

Gayton McKenzie and the Patriotic Alliance have exploited the “illegal foreigners” narrative for political gain. President Cyril Ramaphosa now speaks of stricter border policies, crackdowns, and enforcement, but too often, the state finds its resolve only after the mob has chosen its target.

There’s nothing brave about showing up with a microphone after the flames have been lit.

Let’s accurately identify the challenge.

South Africa faces a migration management issue.

It is also trapped in a larger crisis of ineffective governance, rampant unemployment, violent crime, municipal collapse, a broken Home Affairs system, exploitative employers, and a political class out of ideas.

Instead of confronting these issues, politicians and faux-activists have found a cheaper alternative: blaming foreigners.

The foreigner becomes the scapegoat for every unfulfilled promise.

Can Home Affairs not meet its obligations? Blame the foreigner. Are municipalities failing to manage waste collection? Blame the foreigner.

Are clinics overcrowded? Blame the foreigner.

Are jobs scarce? Blame the foreigner.

Is crime plaguing communities? Blame the foreigner.

This is not bravery; it’s cowardice with a loudspeaker.

We know the road this leads down. In 2008, 62 people lost their lives to xenophobic violence, including 21 South Africans. Even when the mob thinks it’s targeting foreigners, South Africans suffer as well.

Xenowatch, which tracks xenophobic incidents in South Africa, has reported over 1,300 occurrences since 1994, displacing more than 128,000 people and resulting in 698 deaths.

In 2021, 354 individuals perished during the July unrest, seemingly triggered by the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma.

But that chaos rapidly escalated into something larger and far more sinister: looting, vigilantism, racial unrest, revenge, opportunistic violence, and the collapse of societal order.

Each outbreak comes with a justification.

The deceased never participate in discussions around the slogan.

Let’s not even begin with the pre-1994 killing spree carried out in the name of politics. What politics? We fought for liberation.

We fought to counter-revolution. We fought for law and order. We fought for the people.

Now we threaten death in the name of border control.

Why do we always seek justifications for violence?

The unsettling answer is that violence provides failed politics with a spurious sense of purpose. It offers unemployed individuals a façade of power.

It gives demagogues an audience. It rallies the timid. It provides the state with a pretext to feign shock.

This matters because a nation that normalizes the public humiliation of Black African migrants endangers not only the migrants but trains itself to accept mob rule.

Currently, the mob demands identification from Malawians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, and other Black Africans.

Tomorrow, it will demand proof of belonging from South Africans with the “wrong” surname, accent, skin tone, political views, or address.

Once violence becomes regarded as a language of citizenship, no one is safe.

This is why saying “we just want the law enforced” is insufficient. Law enforcement belongs to a constitutional state, not to mobs.

If someone is undocumented, there are legal avenues available. If an employer is exploiting undocumented labor, hold the employer accountable.

If Home Affairs is corrupt, reform it.

If borders are mismanaged, improve their oversight. If a crime occurs, investigate and prosecute it.

But don’t present the impoverished with a Black African foreigner and call it justice.

South Africa carries a debt it prefers to overlook.

Johannesburg was built on migrant labor.

Men journeyed from across the region to mine gold, bolster the economy, and reside in compounds while others amassed wealth.

During the apartheid struggle, South African exiles received refuge, training, and political backing from African nations that owed us nothing but showed solidarity.

Now, with shocking historical amnesia, we speak of African migrants as if they appeared overnight to seize a nation built without them.

Yet, this is the elephant in the room that we refuse to confront: the deeper grievances rooted in colonialism and apartheid.

Those who built and profited from that system exploited land and resources, seized wealth, abused African labor, violated women, and caused multiple deaths in conflicts.

Today, many enjoy peace while poor Black Africans are cast as the embodiment of national failure. I’m not advocating for revenge; I’m calling for nuance.

Migration did not tear South Africa apart; it was integral to its creation.

What shattered it was ineffective governance, corruption, economic stagnation, municipal dysfunction, an educational system that enforces inequality, and an inability to envision a state that is both strong and compassionate.

A genuine nation does not surrender sovereignty to vigilantes, anti-migrant factions, hashtags, marches, or camera-ready demagogues. It governs.

The migration issue demands data, not hysteria. It calls for constitutional discipline, not political theatrics.

It necessitates lawful enforcement, not mob judgments.

It requires a state capable of distinguishing between asylum seekers, documented immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, vendors, students, and criminal suspects.

And it calls for honesty from South Africans.

If Ziggy arrived today, would we embrace him as a brother or perceive him as a burden? If Percy offered a hungry South African student dinner now, would we express appreciation or demand his documentation?

If Joe once more questioned why the South African government couldn’t help its impoverished citizens, would we respond honestly or shout “Abahambe”?

The tragedy of South Africa isn’t that we run out of rationalizations; it’s that we perpetually have victims.

Once the dust settles, politicians will deny accountability. Pseudo-activists will claim they only sought law enforcement.

Police will state that investigations are ongoing.

Families will mourn their dead.

Those who warned against the violence will be labeled sellouts, while others will move on to the next slogan.

Until the next justification arises.

That is not patriotism.

It is climbing on the backs of Black Africans to reach a higher status while mistaking a lack of ideas for activism.

*Bhekisisa Mncube is an author and columnist who won the national 2024 Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award for columns/editorials, as well as the same category at the regional 2020 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards. First published here

*The views expressed by Bhekisisa Mncube are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes