From freedom fight to xenophobia — the anti-democratic pivot of SA protest

South Africa’s democracy is founded on acts of protest.

In June 1913, hundreds of women marched on Bloemfontein to protest against the extension of the pass laws. They destroyed their state-issued documents in front of municipal officials and faced the brutality of the police.

In June 1952, the first mass protests of the Defiance Campaign began, as volunteers gathered in and around the Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg, where the campaign’s leaders were being tried for defying apartheid’s unjust laws.

Fifty years ago, in June 1976, schoolchildren in Soweto took to the streets in protest against the conditions of their education — and inspired a nationwide series of uprisings that shattered the apparent invincibility of the apartheid state.

And now, at the end of June 2026, we face the possibility of another nationwide series of protests — aimed not at the excesses of an unjust regime, but at the mere presence of foreigners in a post-apartheid South Africa.

For the past 20 years, I have studied the protests that have made and are still making our society: those that led to the collapse of the apartheid regime, and those that have pushed our democracy to live up to its promises of equality for all. I have argued in several books that protest is the bedrock of democratic politics: that it is through community organisation and activism — often on the streets, and often confronting an unresponsive state — that we continue to expand democracy in practice.

But these recent protests — those that have already happened across South Africa’s large cities and those that are promised for the near future — represent something different. In their obsessive focus on the expulsion of foreigners from the country, they represent the antithesis of the democratic politics that have driven protest in South Africa for decades.

Instead of seeking to expand access to democratic rights — as the protests that opposed apartheid did — and instead of seeking to hold post-apartheid democracy to its promises — as the protests of social movements have done — this wave of xenophobic action seeks to close down and restrict society. It seeks to remake our nation: to reverse the expansive vision of a common humanity embedded in our Constitution and to close our communities off from the rest of the continent and the world. It represents a fundamentally anti-constitutional and anti-democratic project, one that is at odds with the society that we have sought to build since the birth of our contemporary order.

If this wave of protests is a genuine reflection of a mass movement of South Africans, deeply committed to the project of re-segregating the country on the basis of nationality, then our democracy is in deep trouble. There are signs that this might indeed be the case: most notably, the xenophobia of the streets is in line with the xenophobia of the state’s recent efforts to reduce the rights of refugees, to make it ever harder for foreign-born residents to obtain legal documentation, and to use the presence of so-called “illegal foreigners” to justify violent raids on inner-city buildings.

But there are also signs that the current wave of xenophobic protests may not be a genuine reflection of a majority of the country’s opinions — and that at least some of the participants in them may be less committed to the project than they appear to be.

Except for the 2008 xenophobic attacks, outbreaks of xenophobic violence have generally been localised: horrific acts of local rage and cruelty that rarely spread beyond their immediate vicinity. This does not minimise the tragedies of these actions, but it does point to the unusual nature of the coordinated national actions of our present moment.

As investigative journalists have pointed out, there appear to be significant economic and political forces behind the social media campaigns that have catalysed the current wave of protest. It is very difficult otherwise to understand how so many high-profile events could have been planned across the country in the absence of any discernible grassroots organisation emerging out of the locations in which they have occurred.

Shallow coalition

It may turn out that this movement represents a shallow coalition: of those who genuinely support a xenophobic worldview; of those who feel sidelined by the high-handed nature of the state’s bureaucracy; of those who are frustrated by the failure of the post-apartheid system to deliver on its promises of economic transformation; of those who have been excluded from sources of state patronage in recent years; and of those nostalgic for an earlier era of patriarchal and traditional authority. These groups may have been brought together to protest in this moment of xenophobic reactions, but they are not equally committed to the project and its anti-democratic implications.

If this is true, then it has implications for how we respond to this wave of protests.

It is important to think about this, because it seems to me that the longevity of this moment — and the ability of xenophobia to take root in the heart of our politics — lies in the nature of our response to these protests. If we believe in the expansive vision of South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional order, and in the shared humanity of all, regardless of the fictions of national citizenship, then we must condemn these protests.

But condemnation will not be enough.

Whatever happens on Tuesday, 30 June, there will undoubtedly be horrors — violence, death, and petty cruelties. If we are to rebuild in the wake of this call to inhumanity, then I think we have to draw upon the longer history of protest and democracy in South Africa to set out an alternate vision of South Africa: one grounded in our democratic traditions, our constitutional values, and our shared humanity.

The state must cease to provide cover for the cruelties of xenophobia by scapegoating foreigners. It must make a positive case for the moral imperative of providing a safe haven for those fleeing the horrors of their home countries; it must set out a vision for our role as part of Africa, one based on mutual respect rather than on raised borders. It must also respond to the complaints of those who have joined in this movement out of a frustration that is only tangentially connected to the fear of foreigners: it must work to live up to its promises of economic redistribution and effective equality for all.

But this is not just a matter for the state. Those of us who believe in democracy and constitutionalism must also continue to organise and act: to show that the social media frenzy that has accompanied this wave of xenophobic activism does not capture the full range of South Africans’ beliefs. To show that it is possible to build an inclusive society — and not one that scapegoats the most vulnerable to preserve the privileges of others.

For generations, South Africans have fought for the end of exploitation and the expansion of political, civil, social and economic rights. The present anti-democratic and xenophobic moment need not be a sign of the failure of these struggles. It can be — and must be — a call for their renewal, for a return to the beliefs that have forged our country. DM