South Africa’s xenophobic crisis is claiming lives. Mozambique says five of its nationals were killed in anti-foreigner violence in May. Ghana reported a citizen killed on Monday. More than 25,000 migrants departed in the weeks before Tuesday’s marches, with some governments evacuating their own nationals as fear gripped communities across the country.
The marches themselves were triggered by an arbitrary deadline set by campaign groups demanding that foreigners leave South Africa. Thousands took to the streets in response. For the migrants caught in the middle, legal status, decades of residence, and marriage to South African citizens have provided no protection against intimidation, violence, and denial of services. Advocacy groups have documented systematic exclusion from health services and other essential support, driven in part by movements like Operation Dudula and March and March.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/02/the-guardian-view-on-xenophobic-violence-in-south-africa-anti-migrant-politics-cant-fix-domestic-problems.
What makes this crisis so damaging to ordinary South Africans is the gap between the anger and its target. Official data shows migrants make up less than 5 percent of the population, roughly 3 million people. Campaign groups claim the real figure could be ten times higher, framing the issue as one of illegal immigration. Yet the structural failures fueling public frustration, unemployment exceeding 40 percent, overstretched public services, endemic crime, and persistent inequality, are not consequences of migration. They are the legacy of apartheid, compounded by decades of corruption and mismanagement in the post-1994 era.
This is not a new pattern. Three decades ago, President Nelson Mandela expressed distress at rising xenophobia, reminding an ANC rally that South Africa had inherited “a legacy of unity and solidarity.” The 2008 attacks killed at least 62 people. Each wave follows the same logic: rather than address root causes, political actors and community groups find it convenient to blame outsiders.
Jean Pierre Misago and Loren Landau, founders of the Xenowatch monitoring platform, push back hard on the idea that this is purely grassroots frustration. They describe anti-migrant mobilization as “a political enterprise co-produced by vigilante groups and the state through acts of commission and omission,” including inadequate official condemnation of violence. With municipal elections approaching in November, the question of who benefits from sustained anti-migrant sentiment becomes harder to ignore. Opposition politicians from ActionSA have called for stricter action against illegal migration. Associates of former president Jacob Zuma maintain connections to the March and March movement, with politicians from his uMkhonto we Sizwe party attending its events.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has tried to hold two positions at once, announcing a crackdown on illegal migration while simultaneously condemning “fear, anger, hatred or violence.” The government has largely treated xenophobic harassment as a law-and-order problem rather than confronting the political mobilization driving it. Grassroots voices have spoken against the violence, but sustained moral leadership from the top has been absent.
The civic cost extends well beyond the migrants directly targeted. South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle drew support from across Africa and the world. That history is now a source of anger among political leaders and publics on the continent, as the country pursues the very exclusion and oppression the liberation movement fought to dismantle. Damaged diplomatic relationships, deterred tourism, and weakened trade are consequences that fall on all South Africans, not only migrants.
Expelling migrants will not create jobs, repair public services, or reduce crime. Poorer South Africans have legitimate grievances, and those grievances deserve real answers. The question now is whether political leaders will offer those answers before November’s elections, or whether the cycle of scapegoating will simply continue, leaving the structural failures that drive public anger exactly where they are.