Law over rage: SA must choose before anti-migrant anger descends into chaos

On 30 June, as some South Africans take to the streets to express their anger about illegal immigration, we are called upon to pause, to think, and to ask ourselves what kind of country we are becoming, and what kind of country we still seek to build.

It would be easy, in the comfort of distance, to dismiss those who march as merely hateful, xenophobic or misled. It would also be easy, in the heat of anger, for others to turn the genuine pain of communities into a reckless campaign of intimidation, humiliation and violence. Both paths are wrong. Both paths are dangerous. Both paths will lead South Africa away from the democratic, humane and lawful society for which many sacrificed.

The truth we must confront is that South Africa has a serious immigration management problem. It is a problem that cannot be solved by denial. It cannot be solved by mobs. It cannot be solved by slogans shouted from either side of the argument. It cannot be solved by the arrogance of those who speak of tolerance while insulated from the daily realities of poor communities. Nor can it be solved by the cruelty of those who believe that another African, because he or she is poor, desperate or undocumented, is therefore less human.

The dilemma

A serious republic must be able to say two things at once.

It must say that no human being should be hunted, humiliated or dehumanised. It must also say that no country can afford to have people living within its borders without any lawful record, without documentation, without traceable identity, and without any meaningful relationship with the institutions of the state.

This is where the conversation must begin.

It must not begin with hatred. It must not begin with the dangerous lie that every foreign national is a criminal. But equally, it must not begin with the dismissive attitude that says communities must keep quiet when they raise concerns about undocumented migration, overcrowded services, crime, informal trading tensions, labour exploitation and the visible absence of the state.

The consequences

The poor see what the comfortable can afford not to see.

It is the residents of townships, informal settlements and villages who live closest to the consequences of weak border management, corrupt policing, exploitative employers, poorly regulated informal economies and failing local government.

They are the ones who stand in long queues at clinics. They are the ones whose children attend overcrowded schools. They are the ones who see abandoned buildings hijacked, informal settlements mushroom, local businesses struggle and criminal networks take root where the democratic state has withdrawn.

Their concerns must therefore not be dismissed. They must be heard. But they must also be guided towards lawful, humane and lasting solutions.

South Africa must say clearly that African solidarity does not mean lawlessness. The fact that we are Africans together does not mean that borders do not matter, documents do not matter, laws do not matter, and the authority of the state must be surrendered.

Properly understood, African solidarity requires order, dignity and mutual responsibility. It requires that people move through lawful processes, that they are known to the authorities and that they are protected from exploitation precisely because they are not condemned to live in the shadows.

Documentation

Undocumented migration harms South Africans. But it also harms migrants themselves.

A person without documents is vulnerable to abuse by employers, landlords, criminals and corrupt officials. Such a person may be underpaid, threatened, denied justice and forced into silence. When they are victims of crime, they may fear reporting it.

When they die, their death may itself become part of a dark and dehumanising underground system. There have long been stories, told quietly by law enforcement officers and border communities, of dead undocumented migrants being transported secretly back to their countries of origin.

Whether each story is told with full accuracy or not, the moral point remains: invisibility does not protect human dignity. It destroys it.

A human being must not live unknown and die unknown.

This is why documentation must be at the centre of any lasting solution. South Africa must know who is within its borders. This is not a call for cruelty. It is a call for the restoration of the basic authority of the democratic state.

Documentation allows the state to identify those who commit crime. It allows migrants who are lawfully here to work, study, rent, trade, pay tax, open bank accounts, report abuse and participate openly in the life of the country. It allows planning. It allows accountability. It allows compassion to be organised through institutions, rather than shouted as a slogan.

But documentation alone will not be enough.

Law enforcement

The law must be enforced. Those who are in South Africa unlawfully, and who have no valid claim to remain, must be deported through proper legal processes. This is not hatred. It is the duty of the state. Every country has the right to determine who may enter, who may stay, and under what conditions. South Africa must not be made to feel guilty for insisting on this basic principle of sovereignty.

At the same time, deportation must not become a spectacle of anger. It must not be done by vigilantes. It must not be outsourced to groups who demand documents from people in clinics, schools, shops or on the streets. It must not become a licence for humiliation. The monopoly of immigration enforcement belongs to the state, acting through the Constitution, the law, the courts, the police and authorised officials.

Once communities take the law into their own hands, we no longer have immigration control. We have disorder. We have fear. We have the beginnings of chaos.

And chaos will not serve South Africa.

It will not serve our economy. It will not serve our standing on the continent. It will not serve our claim to moral leadership in Africa and the world. It will not serve the memory of those who stood with us during the darkest years of apartheid. But neither will false politeness serve us. Pretending that there is no crisis, when many communities experience one daily, is also a betrayal of the country.

Fair and firm solution

We therefore need a solution that is both firm and humane.

First, South Africa must strengthen border management and remove corruption from immigration systems. A border controlled by corrupt officials is not a border. A visa system captured by syndicates is not an immigration system. A police service that turns a blind eye in exchange for payment is not enforcing the law. The fight against illegal immigration must therefore begin inside the state itself.

Second, employers who knowingly hire undocumented migrants must face serious consequences. Many undocumented migrants are not merely breaking the law. They are also being used by people who profit from their vulnerability. Such employers undercut South African workers, weaken labour standards and deepen resentment between poor people who should not be enemies.

Third, South Africa must protect genuine refugees and asylum seekers. We must never forget that some people come here because they are fleeing war, persecution, political instability or conditions that have become unbearable.

Our own history should make us careful when speaking of those who cross borders in search of safety. But compassion must be organised through credible systems. An asylum system that is abused by those who do not qualify, or delayed until it becomes meaningless, harms both the state and genuine refugees.

Fourth, there must be a serious discussion about a once-off, conditional regularisation process for those already inside the country. Some may call this amnesty. I would call it a hard and honest process of national accounting. It must not be automatic. It must not reward criminality. It must involve biometric registration, proper background checks, criminal record checks in South Africa and countries of origin where possible, proof of residence, and clear exclusion of anyone involved in serious crime, trafficking, fraudulent documents or threats to national security.

This would recognise a difficult reality: not all undocumented migrants are in the same position. Some have been here for many years. Some have children born or raised here. Some work, trade, worship and live in our communities. Some entered unlawfully. Others were failed by a broken documentation system. A blanket deportation campaign may satisfy anger for a moment, but it will not build a migration system. It may scatter people, strengthen smugglers, deepen fear and leave the state as blind tomorrow as it was yesterday.

The objective must be normalisation, not theatre.

Fifth, South Africa must work with neighbouring countries and the continent. Migration is not only a domestic issue. It is also a regional question of poverty, political failure, uneven development, porous borders and weak documentation systems. We need agreements on identity verification, criminal record sharing, readmission of deportees, seasonal labour, legal work pathways and the fight against trafficking and smuggling networks.

South Africa cannot carry the failures of the region alone. But it also cannot pretend that it is an island.

The coming march should therefore be a warning to the state, not a licence for lawlessness.

A serious government response

If the government does not act with seriousness, communities will become more impatient. If communities are not listened to, opportunists will organise their anger. If migrants are left undocumented, they will remain vulnerable. If employers and corrupt officials are left untouched, the problem will reproduce itself. If we reduce everything to xenophobia, we will not solve it. If we reduce everything to criminality, we will lose our humanity.

South Africa stands at a dangerous crossroads.

One road leads to denial, decay and periodic explosions of violence. The other road leads to the difficult work of restoring the authority of the state, documenting every person within our borders, enforcing the law without cruelty, protecting the vulnerable without surrendering sovereignty, and rebuilding trust between communities and institutions.

We must choose the second road.

We must choose law over rage. We must choose documentation over invisibility. We must choose order over chaos. We must choose a disciplined African solidarity that respects both human dignity and national sovereignty.

For in the end, the question is not whether South Africa must control its borders. It must. The question is whether it will do so as a serious constitutional democracy, or whether it will allow anger, fear and neglect to write the next chapter of our national life.

That chapter must not be written in the streets by mobs.

It must be written by a state that has finally found the courage to govern. DM