Joburg migration politics shows failure of real leadership amid battle for city in run-up to polls

As the race for Joburg’s mayoral seat sets off to the local government elections later this year, you would expect the campaigning party’s focus to be on fixing what is broken in people’s daily lives, such as jobs, housing and basic services. Instead, the political fight for Johannesburg has been reduced to one loud message: “Illegal immigrants are the problem.”

It’s a simple, emotional and politically useful, yet deeply misleading, stance.

Across the political spectrum, parties are competing to sound the toughest on migration, but if you listen closely, what they are really offering is not a plan to fix the city, but a plan to shift the blame.

Take mayoral candidate Helen Zille and her party, the DA, which has come out strongly on law and order, promising to deal with undocumented migrants and reclaim hijacked buildings in Johannesburg, presenting this as the key to restoring the city. Yet this position raises serious questions, because while the DA talks tough on enforcement, it says very little about what happens after those buildings are reclaimed, and how the housing crisis in the city will be addressed in a meaningful way.

Because the truth is simple: Johannesburg has a housing crisis, not just a law enforcement problem. Thousands of people are living in overcrowded conditions. Many have no choice but to occupy abandoned or hijacked buildings because there is nowhere else to go. Families are squeezed into unsafe spaces, not because they want to break the law, but because the City has failed to provide affordable housing.

So, when parties talk about “clearing out” buildings without a clear plan for where people will go, it is not a solution, it is a displacement strategy.

Then there is ActionSA, which has built its message around being tough on undocumented migrants and reclaiming the city. But, like the DA, it focuses heavily on enforcement and control without offering a serious, detailed plan to deal with housing at scale, especially for the urban poor who are already struggling to survive in one of the most unequal cities in the world.

It is easy to say “fix hijacked buildings”. It is much harder to say how those buildings will be turned into safe, affordable housing for the people who need it most.

The ANC talks about rights, dignity and inclusion, but its biggest problem is its own record. After years of running the city it has failed to deal with the housing backlog, failed to maintain buildings and failed to stop the decay that has led to entire parts of Johannesburg being abandoned or taken over.

The ANC cannot escape the reality that the housing crisis we see today is also the result of years of weak local government and poor planning.

And then there is the EFF, which at least shifts the conversation towards land, inequality and economic justice, and which supports the idea that the state must play a stronger role in providing housing. But there is still a gap between strong political messaging and a clear, practical plan that shows how social housing can be rolled out at the scale needed in a city like Johannesburg.

So, across all parties there is a common problem: they are all big talk and very little detail.

The DA talks about control without a housing plan.

ActionSA talks about enforcement without social solutions. The ANC talks about rights but has failed to deliver. The EFF talks about justice but has not fully shown how to implement it.

And in that gap, migrants become the easiest target. Because it is easier to blame them than to fix a broken housing system. It is easier to talk about deportations than to build homes. It is easier to promise crackdowns than to invest in long-term solutions.

The crisis comes from years of underinvestment, poor urban planning, corruption and a failure to build enough affordable housing for a growing population. It comes from a system where land and property remain out of reach for the majority, forcing people into overcrowded and unsafe conditions.

This is where the conversation needs to change. Instead of treating hijacked buildings only as a law and order issue, the parties should be asking a different question: how do we turn these spaces into safe, low-cost housing for the people who need it?

Abandoned buildings in the inner city can be converted into social housing. Local government can partner with housing organisations to upgrade these spaces. Residents can be formalised into safe, regulated housing instead of being pushed out with nowhere to go.

This is not a soft approach. It is a smart and practical one that deals with safety, overcrowding and the real needs of the urban poor.

But this kind of thinking requires political courage and long-term planning – and that is exactly what is missing in the current battle for Joburg.

Instead, we are getting short-term politics, slogans about migrants, promises to “clean up” the city and tough talk without a clear vision. And the danger is that this kind of politics does not solve problems, it hides them. It creates the impression of action while leaving the real issues untouched.

Even worse, it fuels a narrative that other Africans are to blame, feeding into the kind of thinking we see from figures like Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and movements such as Operation Dudula, where frustration turns into hostility, and hostility can turn into violence.

Thirty years after the Constitution, South Africa should be having serious conversations about housing, land and economic justice. We should be building cities that work for everyone, not just for those who can afford them. We should be moving beyond blame and towards real solutions.

But right now, in the fight for Johannesburg, that is not what we are seeing.

We are seeing a political class that is more comfortable talking about migrants than fixing the city. And until that changes, the crisis will continue no matter how many times politicians promise to “take back control”. DM

Oliver Meth is a development and political communications strategist.