Looming carnage: On the dangerous anti-migrant mobilisation in South Africa

As with the mobilisation of the populist right internationally, which draws on and misdirects people’s real grievances against the wrong targets (vulnerable people instead of the systems perpetuating their insecurity), we are seeing in South Africa today – as in, among others, Belfast, elsewhere in Europe and in the US – that this deflection will prevail every time against a human rights paradigm that doesn’t address people’s material concerns, and which can be easily written off as elitist and out of touch.

In South Africa, characterised by sky-high levels of poverty, unemployment and hunger, undocumented migrants have become the target for an extremely dangerous mobilisation, with a shadowy movement, March and March, together with organisations like Jacob Zuma’s MK party, giving migrants until 30 June to leave the country, threatening not only to repeat, but massively intensify previous xenophobic waves. This threatens to be even greater in scale than the July 2021 looting and riots that devastated South Africa.

It is in this context that we have had to confront a shocking (but not surprising) level of anti-foreigner sentiment among politically aware South Africans, such as in a large (more than 500 members) WhatsApp group of former anti-apartheid activists of which I am a member. It is painfully obvious to me from reading the comments in this group, and in social media generally, that merely moralising about the ills of xenophobia is to completely misread the mood in many communities and workplaces, where people are directing their anger against foreign migrants instead of the system that has failed them.

What needs to be pointed out is the stark reality that the carnage that threatens to unfold will devastate not only migrants but all poor people and workers. Only reactionary political forces will benefit from promoting this unfolding chaos, in the run-up to our local government elections, perversely presenting themselves as being in support of ordinary people.

It is in this context that I sent the letter below to my comrades in the activist WhatsApp group in an attempt to draw attention to the devastating consequences this unfolding pogrom will have on the very people they say they want to help. DM