Reading Eskom chair Mteto Nyati’s post on the anti-migrant protests, I found myself agreeing with much of it but also wanting to push the argument a little further.
He is unquestionably right about one thing. There is something discernibly offensive in the assumption, made by some, that black South Africans are somehow predisposed to violence. In 1994, many in their middle-class urban idylls predicted an apocalypse. They began stockpiling canned food and preparing escape plans. Yet South Africans, black South Africans in particular, confounded the pessimists. They chose negotiation over retribution and reconciliation over revenge.
But history also teaches us that no society, however tolerant, can absorb unlimited dysfunction indefinitely.
That is where I part company with much of the current debate. Too often we are presented with a false choice. On one side sit those who insist that any concern about illegal immigration is xenophobia dressed up in respectable language. On the other are those who blame virtually every social ill on foreigners. Both positions are intellectually lazy.
South Africa does have an illegal immigration problem. To deny this is absurd.
I have travelled extensively across the country over the past two decades as a journalist. Whether in Joburg, Musina, Durban, Cape Town or small rural towns, one encounters the same complaint repeatedly: “The state no longer appears to know who is in the country, where they are, or on what legal basis they remain.” Whether that perception is entirely accurate is almost beside the point. In politics, perceptions eventually become realities.
And the perception exists because the ANC-led state has earned it.
South Africa’s borders have long been porous. The asylum system has been dysfunctional for years. I know of one person who has employed a Malawian as an economic migrant for 25 years and who has tried to obtain South African citizenship but can’t due to the corruption at home affairs.
I know that legally, a long-term economic migrant is not automatically entitled to citizenship. The usual route is permanent residence first, then naturalisation after meeting the residence and character requirements. But morally and economically, a country that allows someone to work here for a quarter of a century, to embed himself in a community and contribute to the economy while keeping him trapped in bureaucratic limbo, is just manufacturing illegality.
Worse, corruption turns immigration law into a class system. Those with money, lawyers and connections find a way through. The poor, even the honest and hardworking, remain vulnerable to exploitation and political scapegoating.
Even now, despite recent improvements under the GNU, home affairs is still playing catch-up after years of neglect. The department deported almost 47,000 undocumented migrants in the 2024/2025 financial year and says more than 109,000 deportations have occurred over the past two years, a sharp increase on previous years. The very scale of these numbers illustrates both the seriousness of the problem and the extent of previous enforcement failures.
Yet it would be equally dishonest to pretend that illegal immigration is the primary cause of South Africa’s woes.
A country with an official unemployment rate of 32.7%, youth unemployment above 60% in some cohorts, collapsing municipalities, failing schools, broken policing and anaemic economic growth was always going to experience this sort of social tension.
Immigrants did not create Eskom’s problems. Immigrants did not loot state-owned enterprises. Immigrants did not hollow out municipalities, destroy rail infrastructure or preside over two lost decades of economic stagnation.
Blaming Zimbabwean shopkeepers or Malawian gardeners for South Africa’s economic failures is rather like blaming passengers for a ship’s captain who has run the vessel aground.
Still, one ignores the labour market dynamics at one’s peril. In a country where millions of South Africans cannot find work, the ready availability of vulnerable undocumented labour inevitably suppresses wages and encourages exploitation in sectors such as agriculture, hospitality, construction and informal trade.
The real villains here are often not migrants, but employers willing to circumvent labour laws in pursuit of lower costs.
And this is where the current trajectory becomes dangerous.
When citizens lose confidence that the state can enforce something as fundamental as border control, they eventually attempt to enforce it themselves. That rarely ends well. Around the world, whenever governments abdicate core sovereign functions, populists and vigilantes rush into the vacuum.
This week we approached that moment.
If the problem is left unchecked we should expect periodic outbreaks of violence and worsening diplomatic tensions with neighbouring countries. Look at how Gold Fields is floundering in its renegotiation of its Damang mining right in Ghana for a glimpse into the lasting damage this is doing. There will also be further erosion of social cohesion, expanding criminal syndicates involved in trafficking and document fraud, and the continued rise of anti-immigrant politics.
None of these outcomes is inevitable, but all are plausible. Recent surveys show hostility towards immigration is already at historically elevated levels.
So what is to be done?
First, abandon magical thinking. South Africa cannot deport its way out of this problem. Nor can it moralise its way out.
Second, restore state credibility. Secure the borders. Digitise and clean up home affairs. Process asylum claims quickly. Remove those with no legal right to remain but do so lawfully and humanely. Punish document fraud ruthlessly. Enforce penalties against employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers (here we all have to take a long hard look in the mirror). Create legal pathways for scarce skills and seasonal labour.
Third, and most importantly, grow the economy. Because in a country creating hundreds of thousands of jobs a year, immigration becomes manageable.
Nyati is right that South Africans are not inherently savage. I have seen too much kindness, generosity and decency across this country to believe otherwise.
But a constitutional democracy must be capable of simultaneously defending human dignity, enforcing the rule of law and controlling its borders. The tragedy is that South Africa has spent too long pretending these objectives are somehow contradictory.
