KG Mokgadi ventures out to a March and March protest. (Photo: Politically Aweh) With less than four months to go until the 2026 South African municipal elections, Mzansi made all the wrong headlines across the continent this June and July with a series of xenophobic protest marches in our city centres, and deportations of a number of undocumented foreign nationals.
Political parties, activist groups and social media campaigns are increasingly framing migrants as the cause of South Africa’s biggest problems. Even state President Cyril Ramaphosa himself joined in the fray when he confidently declared in the 2026 State of the Nation Address this past February that “illegal immigration continues to pose a risk to our security, our stability, and economic progress”.
So it must be true.
Mustn’t it?
For this episode of Politically Aweh, KG Mokgadi took to the streets armed only with his trusty mic and his cunning to ask the hard questions: Are South Africans justified to be this angry over migrant workers? Are Malawians stealing our jobs? Are Mozambicans responsible for the rise in crime? Do our citizens not have access to healthcare because Zimbabweans are overburdening the system?
Statistics unearthed by co-host Zoë Human to address these questions indicate that the proportion of immigrants in South Africa is actually dwindling while deportation figures keep going up, and that prison statistics don’t support the myth that migrants are responsible for the levels of crime in the country.
But why let facts get in the way of a juicy electioneering narrative?
“There has been a race to the bottom among all of the parties, where everyone is trying to show that they are strong, or stronger, on immigration,” says Dr Loren Landau from the African Centre for Migration & Society. “It is a convenient way to offer a false solution to South Africa’s very real problems without having to take responsibility,” he says, as the nation prepares to go to the polls once again.
But who is orchestrating these controversial marches behind the scenes? And are they as consequential as the media plays them up to be, or is all of this just “for the views”?
“When you run an information operation, you don’t have to convince the entire population – you get the media to cover the narrative in an uncritical way,” says Kyle Findlay, a data scientist with Murmur Intelligence.
Is this why KG encountered more journalists than protesters when he took our cameras to the March and March protest action on 16 June?
“It feels like somebody hasn’t paid for the bus,” he cracked.
This episode explores legal and pragmatic ways to address the problems caused by illegal migration, but would they play as well on social media?
Kyle Findlay’s analysis of close to four million tweets showed signs of a paid influence campaign behind the scenes of South Africa’s xenophobia.
“The reality is that all of this is manufactured,” he warns.
“There’s money, there are interests, xenophobia is a highly profitable industry. Xenophobic violence gets you political power, it gets you economic power,” Dr Landau points out. “Keep asking the questions that are going to get you beat up,” he urges.
Don’t worry, comrade. KG is on the case. DM
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