---
title: "Afrophobia — South Africa’s migration crisis is a governance crisis"
description: "The images emerging from South Africa in the aftermath of the 30 June marches will reverberate across the African continent for years. Families abandoning homes they had built over decades. Businesses shuttered overnight. Parents pulling children from schools. Thousands returning to countries they had long ceased to call home."
type: "OpinionNewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Opinionistas"
author: "Azwihangwisi Mufamadi"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/azwihangwisi-mufamadi/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-07-21-afrophobia-south-africas-migration-crisis-is-a-governance-crisis/"
published: "2026-07-21T22:39:10"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 829
---

# Afrophobia — South Africa’s migration crisis is a governance crisis

> The images emerging from South Africa in the aftermath of the 30 June marches will reverberate across the African continent for years. Families abandoning homes they had built over decades. Businesses shuttered overnight. Parents pulling children from schools. Thousands returning to countries they had long ceased to call home.

By Azwihangwisi Mufamadi · Published 22 July 2026, 00:39 SAST

## Content

![Image](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/ToEp388PygKxbVnnboBpUQ3buys=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/label-Opinion.jpg)

Whatever one’s views on immigration, there is nothing triumphant about watching people lose their livelihoods through fear. The human cost is immense, and it should trouble every South African who believes in the dignity of all people.

Yet reducing what has unfolded to mere Afrophobia, while certainly acknowledging that anti-African prejudice has surfaced in parts of the country, risks overlooking a more uncomfortable truth. The current moment is less a migration crisis than a profound governance crisis.

Migration does not become a crisis because people move across borders. It becomes a crisis when the state loses the capacity to manage migration in a lawful, efficient and credible manner.

### When governance vacuums emerge

For years, South Africans have expressed concerns about porous borders, corruption within the immigration system, weak enforcement of labour legislation and inadequate documentation processes. Whether every perception is supported by evidence is almost beside the point. Public confidence in the state’s ability to administer immigration has steadily eroded.

The numbers tell part of the story. South Africa had just 868 immigration officers responsible for enforcing immigration laws across the entire country despite having an estimated 2.4 million immigrants by 2022. The government has since acknowledged this capacity gap by announcing the recruitment of an additional 301 immigration officers.

No serious observer could reasonably conclude that fewer than 1,000 frontline officials were sufficient to oversee a migration system serving millions of foreign nationals alongside more than 60 million South Africans.

Governance vacuums are never left unfilled. When citizens lose confidence that the state can enforce its own laws, some inevitably attempt to fill that vacuum themselves. That does not legitimise vigilantism; it merely explains why it emerges.

### The paradox of protest

The overwhelming majority of South Africans do not wish to see violence visited upon immigrants. Equally, many do not believe that the country’s immigration system has been effectively managed. Holding both positions simultaneously is neither contradictory nor xenophobic.

The protests themselves reveal another uncomfortable paradox. In South Africa, protest has increasingly become the language through which communities compel the government to listen after conventional democratic channels appear to have failed. Petitions, ward committees, municipal engagement and elected representatives often produce little visible action. Protest, by contrast, almost invariably elicits a response.

It is therefore difficult to ignore the timing of the government’s recent interventions. It took sustained public pressure for the President to accelerate reforms, including changes to labour legislation governing the employment of foreign nationals, alongside broader measures to strengthen migration management, border security and workplace inspections.

Whether these reforms should have been done years earlier is a question the government cannot avoid.

### Policing is not governance

This is also why calls to respond primarily through policing misunderstand the nature of the problem. Law enforcement is indispensable for protecting lives and preventing intimidation. Those who assault immigrants, loot businesses or conduct unlawful “citizen arrests” must face the full consequences of the law. Equally, undocumented migration cannot simply be ignored in a constitutional state.

But policing alone cannot resolve a governance failure.

No amount of riot gear can compensate for years of administrative weakness. Water cannon cannot repair dysfunctional immigration systems. Rubber bullets cannot create employment in an economy burdened by persistently high unemployment, sluggish growth and failing municipalities. Suppressing protest may restore order for a day, but it does little to restore public confidence.

The danger lies in normalising a culture of *kragdadigheid*, the belief that the state’s legitimacy is best demonstrated through displays of force rather than through responsive and accountable governance. A capable state is not one that merely demonstrates its ability to suppress unrest. It is one that governs so effectively that unrest becomes increasingly unnecessary.

### Compassion and capability are not mutually exclusive

South Africa requires a state that is both compassionate and capable.

Compassion means recognising that most immigrants came seeking precisely what generations of South Africans once sought elsewhere: safety, opportunity and dignity. Many have become employers, taxpayers and contributors to local economies. They should never become convenient scapegoats for every societal ill, nor should lawful migrants live in fear because of the failures of public administration.

Capability, however, requires something equally important: secure borders, efficient visa administration, credible documentation systems, effective labour inspections and consistent enforcement of immigration law. These are not contradictory to compassion; they are its necessary foundation.

### The real test of state capacity

Ultimately, stable societies are not built by forcing citizens to choose between humanity and the rule of law. They are built by governments that are capable of delivering both.

South Africa’s migration debate will remain volatile and polarising for as long as the government treats migration as principally a policing problem rather than a governance challenge.

The real measure of state capacity is not how effectively it disperses protests, but how competently it governs before protest becomes inevitable. Only then will both South Africans and immigrants have confidence that the country is governed not by crisis, but by law, accountability and justice. **DM**