Beyond the border — why the immigration debate really mirrors SA’s soul

The debate about immigration in South Africa has been shaped by an important effort to establish the facts. For example, economists point out that immigrants do not simply “take jobs”; instead, they create businesses, contribute skills and expand economic activity.

Historians remind us that migration has always been part of the human story and that virtually all South Africans are descendants of people who moved across borders, regions and continents. In other words, we’re all immigrants. Lawyers emphasise constitutional rights and international obligations.

These arguments matter. They are necessary and important. And, they have been well made by various academics who worked on these matters. As an academic, I usually stick to writing in this vein – about facts and evidence.

What follows is a little unusual for me. I do so because I think there has been something missing in the conversation. What, I think, has not been sufficiently aired is a discussion about how South Africans see themselves and the kind of society we aspire to build. And, what the anti-immigration sentiment, and the attempts by our politicians to “normalise” the issue, tells us about ourselves and our vision for South Africa.

Something remarkable

Our struggle against apartheid and the achievements at the dawn of our democracy represented something remarkable in the world. We emerged from one of the most exclusionary political systems of the 20th century and sought to build a society founded on inclusion, dignity and human rights. We understood, perhaps better than most nations, the dangers of defining belonging through exclusion and fear.

When Nelson Mandela delivered his inauguration address in 1994, he declared that “never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another”. The significance of those words extended beyond race. They spoke to a broader aspiration: that South Africa would reject all forms of exclusion and create a society in which human dignity would be the foundation of public life.

That aspiration found expression in our Constitution. The Preamble speaks of a country that belongs to “all who live in it, united in our diversity”. The founding values commit us to “human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms”. These are not technical provisions. They are statements about the kind of nation we sought to become.

Celebrated speech

The same expansive vision was captured by Thabo Mbeki in his celebrated I Am an African speech, delivered during the adoption of the Constitution in 1996.

Mbeki rejected any narrow conception of South African identity. Instead, he located South Africa within the long history of the continent and the wider world.

“I owe my being”, he declared, to the Khoi and the San, to African farmers and workers, to slaves brought from the East, to European settlers, and to all those whose lives and struggles shaped the country. South African identity, in this telling, was not defined by exclusion or purity. It was forged through encounter, exchange and shared history. It was an identity that embraced complexity and diversity rather than feared it.

Mbeki’s vision remains one of the most compelling articulations of what democratic South Africa sought to become: a nation confident enough to acknowledge its many inheritances, secure enough to embrace difference, and ambitious enough to see itself as both African and global. It was a vision of belonging that expanded the boundaries of community rather than narrowing them.

Noble ambition

There was an ambition that South Africa would be more than just another nation-state pursuing its interests in the narrowest sense.

We hoped to become a country that would demonstrate that diversity could be a source of strength rather than fear. A country that would extend solidarity beyond the boundaries of race, ethnicity and nationality. A country that would challenge prevailing orthodoxies and offer the world an example of what a more humane and inclusive society might look like.

For a time, that aspiration mattered. South Africa occupied a distinctive place in the global imagination. We were respected not because we were wealthy or wielded global power, but because we seemed to embody a larger moral project. We showed that reconciliation was possible. We insisted that human dignity mattered. We demonstrated that inclusivity was possible.

Anti-immigrant sentiment

Today, much of that ambition appears diminished. Even non-existent.

South Africa’s economic crisis is real. Unemployment, poverty and inequality continue to shape the lives of millions of people. These conditions create anxiety, frustration and insecurity. But there is nothing inevitable about directing that frustration towards migrants. Economic hardship does not automatically produce xenophobia.

What deserves greater scrutiny is how anti-immigrant sentiment has become normalised in public discourse.

At a moment when South Africa desperately needs a bold vision of economic transformation and social renewal, some political actors have found it easier to channel public anger towards migrants and refugees than to confront the deeper failures that have produced unemployment, exclusion and despair.

Rather than expanding our horizons, they seek to narrow them. Rather than inviting us to imagine a better future, they encourage us to blame those who are even more vulnerable than ourselves. Across much of the political spectrum, they’re trying to normalise exclusion, “othering”, and anti-immigrant sentiment. It allows them to hide behind their failures.

The measure of a society is not how it behaves when times are easy. It is how it responds when circumstances are challenging and difficult. The question is whether hardship leads us to deepen our commitment to solidarity and justice, or whether it leads us to embrace exclusion.

What is most disappointing about the current debate is not simply the hostility directed at immigrants. It is how quickly we have come to accept a diminished conception of ourselves. We increasingly sound like many other countries where economic anxiety is translated into suspicion of outsiders and where politics is organised around fear rather than hope. We have become ordinary in the worst sense of the word.

Yet South Africa was never meant to be ordinary. The ambition of our democratic transition was not only to build a non-racial state. It was to demonstrate that a society scarred by division could choose inclusion over exclusion, solidarity over suspicion and hope over fear.

A crisis caused by failure

This is not a call for open borders, nor is it a denial that migration creates policy challenges. Every country has the right and responsibility to manage migration in an orderly and lawful manner. But, the crisis that is now before us is not the fault of immigrants. It’s the failure over decades to actually have a policy and implement it in a manner that is grounded in the values that animated our democratic transition.

History suggests that societies flourish when they are open to people, ideas and influences from beyond their borders. The countries and cities that have shaped the modern world have rarely been the most closed. They have drawn strength from the movement of people, the exchange of ideas and the encounter between different cultures and experiences.

The greatest advances in science have emerged from collaboration across borders. Economic dynamism is fuelled by new skills, new networks and new perspectives. Democratic progress is strengthened when societies remain open to debate, diversity and difference. Openness has never been a sign of weakness. It has been a source of renewal, creativity and strength.

South Africa’s future will not be secured by turning inward. It will be secured by finding the confidence to engage with the world, to attract talent, to exchange ideas, to build partnerships and to contribute to solving the great challenges of our time. We should aspire to be a country that is not merely part of the world, but one that helps shape it in progressive and humane ways.

The challenge we face is therefore not primarily one of immigration policy. It is whether we remain faithful to the values and ambitions that shaped our democratic transition.

Why credible leadership matters

At a moment of economic hardship and social anxiety, leadership matters more than ever. It is easy to amplify fears and resentments. It is much harder to articulate a credible and hopeful future. Yet that is precisely what leadership requires. The temptation to identify outsiders as the source of our problems may be politically convenient, but it does nothing to address the deeper failures that have produced unemployment, inequality and social despair.

South Africans should not kow-tow to the small-minded vested interests that seek to mobilise resentment against migrants and refugees for political gain.

Their project is ultimately a politics of contraction: a smaller sense of community, a narrower understanding of belonging and a diminished ambition for what South Africa can be.

We should reject that politics, not only because it is unjust, but because it asks us to settle for less than the country we once aspired to become.

An unfinished promise

Ultimately, the immigration debate is not about migrants. It is about us.

It is about whether we still possess the confidence and ambition that animated the democratic transition. Whether we still believe that South Africa can be more inclusive, more generous and more outward-looking than the world around it. Whether we are prepared to lead with hope rather than fear.

The promise of 1994 was never that South Africa would be easy. It was that South Africa would be different.

Mandela’s vision of a society founded on human dignity, the Constitution’s commitment to a country united in its diversity, and Mbeki’s expansive declaration that “I am an African” all pointed towards a South Africa that was confident in itself and open to the world. They challenged us to build a nation whose horizons were broad rather than narrow, whose instinct was inclusion rather than exclusion, and whose future was shaped by possibility rather than fear.

That promise remains unfinished. The challenge before us is not to retreat into a politics of exclusion, but to recover the confidence to build a larger future – for ourselves, for the continent and for the world.

The question is not whether South Africa can afford to remain open to the world. The question is whether South Africa can afford not to. DM