Social unrest warning for South Africa

On a thoroughfare that usually throbs with music, shouted bargains and the bustle of downtown Johannesburg, the metal shutters on the shops are closed.

Police patrol the Smal Street Mall, where an operation targeting undocumented migrants forced outlets offering everything from Mozambican fabrics to Nigerian cosmetics to shut.

The crackdown in Johannesburg comes amid growing anti-migrant protests across the country, events that have sharpened a national debate over who belongs in the continent’s biggest economy.

Thousands have taken to the streets, and foreigners who are seen as competitors for scarce jobs, housing and government services have been attacked.

The protests place South Africa in a widening global backlash against migration. In Germany, the far-right AfD party has capitalised on voter anxiety over asylum and integration.

US President Donald Trump has made mass deportations a central pillar of his second term. And in the UK, immigration has become one of the country’s most combustible political issues.

In South Africa, the enforcement drive comes as political parties prepare for municipal elections in November, in which they’ll face an electorate angry about broken infrastructure, power and water outages, violent crime and an unemployment rate of almost 33%.

For some South Africans, migrants have become an easy target for issues the state has failed to address.

“We wish to see the people who are not from here leave the country, and for us to be left with our children so that they can get jobs,” Nomthandazo Sithole, a 49-year-old mother of five, said at an anti-immigrant march in Johannesburg on May 21.

“We are fed up. I have children who desperately need jobs. They are sitting at home.”

The unrest has stoked fears of violence on a scale that erupted in South Africa in 2008, when 62 people died and more than 50,000 others were forced to flee their homes in a wave of xenophobic attacks.

Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola has insisted that irregular migration must only be dealt with by law enforcement agencies.

“When South Africans engage on the matter, they must engage in a responsible way, not to add to the politically inflammatory rhetoric that inflames and polarises our society,” he said on May 25, a day after a meeting of Southern African Development Community ministers in the east of the country.

South Africa’s relative wealth has made it a powerful draw for migrants from across the region. Per-capita GDP is about $7,500, far above the $1,080 of Nigeria, Africa’s third-biggest economy, and $632 in neighbouring Mozambique.

The continent’s richest economy, with a population of about 63 million, is home to about 3 million undocumented immigrants, 83% of them from neighbouring countries, according to Statistics South Africa. 

Anti-immigrant sentiment has increased over the past two decades in South Africa and has become more pronounced since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria. 

“One of the reasons for this increase in hostility in recent years is that immigrants are increasingly being perceived as an economic threat,” it said in a May 7 report.

Demonstrations have been led by loosely organised movements, including one known as March and March, and a group headed by Nkosiikhona Ndabandaba, a Zulu cultural activist popularly known as Phakel’umthakathi, which roughly translates as “wrongdoer being handed due punishment.”

“People are standing up for themselves because they are tired, because the government is not saying anything about the situation,” Doris Msibi, a 51-year-old unemployed South African, said in Smal Street as police patrolled nearby.

“They are not helping us with anything, so we are compelled to take the law into our own hands.”

Ndabandaba has led calls for all undocumented foreigners to leave the country by June 30. He’s threatened to intensify efforts if they don’t, saying his group will conduct its own checks to identify those without legitimate documents to be in the country.

At a gathering in Johannesburg last weekend, Ndabandaba called on undocumented foreigners to “respect the peaceful way that we are using to ask you to leave” South Africa.

“We want to understand that all foreigners who are here are providing a scarce skill, are here on educational visas, and are here legally,” he said.

The elections on Nov. 4 will determine who controls the biggest metropolitan cities. Most are in the central Gauteng province, home to Johannesburg and more than half of South Africa’s migrant population.

Political parties have tapped into frustrations about illegal immigration and brought anti-foreigner sentiment into the mainstream.

“We do see political parties attending these marches, and that is concerning,” said Lizette Lancaster, head of Justice and Violence Prevention at the Institute for Security Studies.

The scale and level of coordination with which the anti-migrant protests have been organised have raised questions about how they’re funded.

While there’s no quantifiable evidence, protest leaders may be benefiting from political party support, she said.

The mass deportation of undocumented immigrants has become a key policy pillar for ActionSA, a party led by businessman and former Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba.

It garnered 1.2% support in the last national election, but more than 16% in Johannesburg in a municipal ballot in 2021.

Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, who leads the Patriotic Alliance that garnered 2% of the national vote in 2024’s general election, has also consistently called for undocumented immigrants to leave the country.

Almost 110,000 undocumented migrants have been deported from South Africa since the formation of the nation’s coalition government in June 2024, according to Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber.

Bigger parties are also taking a firmer stance on undocumented migrants, with President Cyril Ramaphosa saying on 2 June that the country would address the issue by enforcing the country’s laws.

This includes boosting border security and tackling corruption, while continuing to reject xenophobia and vigilantism.

Lamola asked his counterparts from neighbouring Eswatini, Mozambique and Zimbabwe last week to consider developing industrial zones in their countries to boost economic growth and help curb migration.

That’s a proposal that resonates with Philips Opara, a Nigerian migrant who sells used jewellery and scrap gold on a sidewalk in central Johannesburg.

Like many undocumented migrants in South Africa, Opara left his homeland because he couldn’t find work. 

“I blame the government of Nigeria,” said Opara, who came to South Africa almost three decades ago. “Because if our government is okay, what are we doing here?”