African Governments Must Answer for Displacement Crisis at Home and Abroad

Pan-Africanism Demands Accountability Beyond South Africa’s Borders

Millions of Africans are being pushed from their homes not by choice but by the failure of their own governments, yet the continent’s response to this crisis remains deeply unbalanced. African nations move swiftly to condemn anti-migrant violence in South Africa, but have been far slower to address the constitutional manipulation, democratic backsliding and institutional decay in their own countries that force people to leave in the first place.

Additional reference context is available at https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/2026-08-02-pan-africanism-cannot-begin-and-end-with-south-africa/.

This contradiction came into sharp focus on 27 July when President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the Pan-African Parliament with a speech that went beyond the usual migration debate. He rejected the false choice between enforcing immigration law and protecting migrant dignity. More significantly, he called on African governments to confront the root causes that compel millions of Africans to abandon their homes, identifying conflict, instability, governance failure, poverty and social discord as the forces that transform migration from a choice into a necessity.

The speech was not notable for what it said about migration policy alone. It was notable for what it demanded of Pan-Africanism itself.

For years, the continent’s commitment to Pan-African solidarity has appeared most visible in moments of criticism directed at South Africa. When xenophobic violence erupts, governments, civil society organisations and commentators across Africa respond with swift and unequivocal condemnation. Those responses are warranted. Intimidation and violence against migrants represent a serious breach of continental values and human dignity. Yet this same urgency has not extended to other forms of political failure. When governments elsewhere manipulate constitutions, weaken democratic institutions or create the conditions that force citizens to flee, the continental response has been notably muted.

Zimbabwe’s recent constitutional amendments, which critics argued required a national referendum, received a fraction of the attention that South Africa’s anti-illegal-immigration protests generated. Democratic backsliding, institutional decline and corruption have triggered far more uneven responses from Pan-African bodies than xenophobic violence has. This disparity reveals a troubling gap in continental accountability.

The causality is direct. Migration does not begin at a border; it begins when governments fail. When economies stop creating opportunity, when corruption diverts public resources, when democratic institutions lose credibility and when conflict destroys livelihoods, people move. By the time migrants arrive at another country’s border, the crisis that produced their movement has often been unfolding for years. To address migration without addressing governance failure is to treat symptoms while ignoring disease.

Ramaphosa’s remarks on this point deserve closer examination. He called on the Pan-African Parliament to defend constitutional democracy by opposing unlawful extensions of political tenure, the weakening of democratic institutions and the misuse of public resources. These comments were not separate from his migration remarks. They were causally connected. The same political failures that drive outward migration also undermine the legitimacy of Pan-African institutions themselves.

This framing exposes a fundamental tension in how the continent approaches accountability. South Africa undoubtedly bears constitutional obligations to protect everyone within its borders from violence and discrimination while enforcing immigration law fairly and consistently. But African governments whose governance failures drive outward migration also bear responsibilities. As noted at mg.co.za/thought-leader/2026-08-02-pan-africanism-cannot-begin-and-end-with-south-africa/, Pan-Africanism loses credibility if it demands accountability from receiving states while remaining largely silent about the political failures of sending states.

A mature Pan-Africanism cannot choose between condemning xenophobia and confronting governance failure. Both are part of the same political story. One concerns how migrants are treated after they move; the other concerns why they were compelled to move at all. Defending migrants from violence is only half of the Pan-African project. The other half is demanding accountable governance, constitutional democracy and inclusive economic development across the continent.

Meanwhile, the everyday stakes for ordinary Africans could not be higher. Citizens who are forced to flee failing states carry the cost of that failure across borders, arriving in communities that are themselves under pressure. The burden falls on people, not abstractions.

The promise of African solidarity has never been simply about freedom of movement across borders. It has always been about creating conditions in which Africans are free to stay. If Pan-Africanism is to remain a credible political and moral project, it must insist on both accountability and protection with equal consistency and force. Whether the Pan-African Parliament takes up that challenge, or retreats to selective outrage, will determine what the project is actually worth.