South Africa’s anti-migrant campaign exposes governance failures, not migrant impact
Three decades after Nelson Mandela warned against xenophobic sentiment, South Africa faces a resurgence of anti-migrant violence that lays bare deep fractures in state accountability and policy direction. The current wave of hostility, marked by mass street mobilizations and the systematic exclusion of foreign nationals from essential services, is not a response to a genuine migrant crisis. It is a symptom of institutional failure and political calculation.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/02/the-guardian-view-on-xenophobic-violence-in-south-africa-anti-migrant-politics-cant-fix-domestic-problems.
The scale of the crisis became apparent this week when thousands marched in response to an arbitrary deadline set by campaign groups demanding migrants leave the country. More than 25,000 people departed in the preceding weeks, with some governments evacuating their own nationals. Mozambique reported five of its citizens killed in anti-foreigner violence in May. Ghana reported a death on Monday, though South African officials have disputed both accounts. The Operation Dudula and March and March movements have coordinated systematic campaigns to block migrants from accessing healthcare and other public services.
The numbers, however, tell a different story about who bears responsibility for South Africa’s crises. Official statistics place the migrant population at less than 5 percent of the total, approximately 3 million people. Campaign groups claim figures as high as 30 million, an implausible assertion that reveals the political rather than factual basis of the mobilization. Migrants with decades of residence, formal documentation, and marriages to South African citizens report receiving no protection from intimidation and violence.
The governance question sharpens when examining who benefits from anti-migrant politics. Jean Pierre Misago and Loren Landau, founders of the Xenowatch monitoring platform, characterize the movement as “a political enterprise co-produced by vigilante groups and the state through acts of commission and omission,” including the state’s failure to adequately censure violence. With municipal elections scheduled for November, politicians from the opposition ActionSA party have explicitly framed illegal migration as a priority. Meanwhile, associates of former president Jacob Zuma maintain links to the March and March movement, and politicians from his uMkhonto we Sizwe party have attended its events.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has attempted to balance competing pressures by launching enforcement actions against illegal migration while rhetorically condemning violence. His government has largely treated xenophobic harassment as a law-and-order matter rather than a governance and accountability issue, a distinction that matters enormously for how the state assigns responsibility and deploys resources.
The actual drivers of South Africa’s suffering are institutional. Unemployment exceeds 40 percent, inequality remains severe, crime persists, and public services are overstretched. These conditions stem from apartheid’s legacy and subsequent corruption and mismanagement, not from migrant presence. Poorer South Africans are right to demand state action on these failures. Directing that anger toward migrants, though, obscures rather than addresses the accountability questions that matter: why has the state failed to deliver jobs, security, and functional services?
The editorial perspective published at theguardian.com on 2 July 2026 emphasizes that anti-migrant mobilization serves political interests while deepening the very problems it claims to address. Forcing migrants out will not restore employment, reduce inequality, or improve services. It damages South Africa’s regional standing, threatens tourism and investment, and eliminates access to skilled workers the country needs.
The state’s failure to exercise moral leadership and enforce accountability for violence is not a side effect of this crisis. It is the crisis. Whether South Africa’s institutions can reassert that accountability before November’s elections is the question that now hangs over the country’s governance.