South Africa’s anger is real, but migrants are not the enemy

South Africans are angry, and for good reason.

Across the country, millions of people are struggling to survive amid rising unemployment, deepening poverty, failing municipalities, collapsing infrastructure and an escalating cost-of-living crisis. Communities are exhausted by persistent inequality, insecurity and the sense that democratic promises remain painfully out of reach.

In this context, it is not surprising that frustration is boiling over.

What should concern us, however, is where that anger is increasingly being directed.

Recent anti-migrant mobilisation, including actions associated with the so-called March and March movement, reflects a dangerous and growing trend in South African politics and public discourse: the attempt to explain structural social and economic crises by blaming migrants, refugees and foreign nationals.

This is neither new nor unique to South Africa. Across the world, periods of economic uncertainty often create fertile ground for scapegoating. Migrants become convenient political symbols onto which societies project fear, frustration and insecurity.

But convenience does not make the argument true.

South Africa’s unemployment crisis was not created by migrants. Neither were collapsing municipalities, corruption, load shedding, austerity budgeting, inequality, gender-based violence or decades of exclusion from economic opportunity.

These crises are rooted in political and economic systems that have failed to transform the deeply unequal foundations of South African society.

Yet, increasingly, public discourse suggests that if migrants were removed, jobs would suddenly appear, services would improve and communities would become safer. This narrative may be emotionally appealing to some, but it dangerously oversimplifies structural problems while placing vulnerable communities at risk.

There is also a deeper political danger here.

When societies begin locating the source of their suffering in other poor and marginalised people, attention shifts away from the real drivers of inequality and exclusion. Structural failures become personalised. Economic injustice becomes nationalised. Public anger is redirected downward rather than upward.

This weakens solidarity precisely when solidarity is most needed.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that many communities raising concerns about migration are themselves living through very real hardship. Dismissing those fears outright would neither be politically wise nor socially constructive.

People are struggling to access jobs, healthcare, housing, safety and basic services. Informal economic competition is intense. State systems are often weak, inconsistent or absent altogether. In many areas, residents experience government failure daily and feel abandoned by institutions meant to serve them.

These realities deserve serious engagement.

But there is a profound difference between engaging social grievances and legitimising xenophobia.

A democratic society must be able to discuss migration policy, border management, labour regulation and service delivery pressures without descending into hate, violence or collective blame. Once violence and dehumanisation enter the conversation, the social fabric begins to unravel for everyone.

South Africa knows this danger intimately.

The xenophobic violence witnessed over the past two decades has repeatedly shown how quickly inflammatory rhetoric can translate into attacks on homes, businesses, livelihoods and lives. It has also shown how easily the language of “protecting communities” can slide into vigilantism, exclusion and fear.

The tragedy is that poor South Africans and migrants often face the same systems of exclusion. Both are navigating inequality, unemployment, housing insecurity and economic precarity. Both are attempting to survive within an economy that concentrates wealth and opportunity in the hands of a small minority.

Pitting vulnerable groups against one another does not solve inequality. It fragments the possibility of collective political solutions.

What South Africa needs now is not deeper division, but a more honest conversation about the structural roots of insecurity and exclusion.

That conversation must include:

• The failure to create decent work at scale;
• Deep spatial inequality inherited from apartheid;
• Weakened public services;
• Austerity measures that reduce social investment;
• Concentrated wealth and corporate power;
• The absence of meaningful economic redistribution; and
• The erosion of public trust in institutions.

These are difficult issues. But they are the real issues.

There is no shortcut around them, and there is certainly no migrant community large enough to explain away the scale of South Africa’s crisis.

At a political level, leaders across society now face an important test. They can either contribute to fear and polarisation for short-term political gain, or they can help create space for principled, rights-based engagement rooted in dignity, evidence and social cohesion.

The choice matters.

South Africa’s democratic project was founded on the belief that human dignity is indivisible. In moments of fear and frustration, that principle becomes harder to defend; but also more important.

Because once societies begin deciding whose dignity matters and whose does not, everyone eventually becomes vulnerable.

South Africa’s future will not be secured through scapegoating. It will be secured through justice, solidarity, accountability and the courage to confront inequality at its roots. DM