Migrants are blamed for causing South Africa’s problems, particularly by groups such as Operation Dudula, which acts in defiance of the Constitution and laws regarding education and health. Photo: AFP
What do the US, UK, Australia and South Africa have in common? As of the time of writing, there are anti-migrant protests in all four countries calling for the swift deportation of undocumented immigrants. Now, since the first three of the aforementioned countries are majority white, while South Africa remains majority black, there is a notable difference as to how this anti-migrant rhetoric is framed and sold to the public.
In the case of the first, there is a deep emphasis on the apparent need for the white-majority country to “preserve its culture”. However, while that dynamic doesn’t necessarily correspond to South Africa, these movements are rooted in a mostly working-class background.
A global decline in living conditions
Since the global dominance of neoliberalism in the 1990s, the priority of governments around the world has no longer been to increase quality of life indicators but to ensure the creation and maintenance of the competitive market order. An economic order which, through theory and implementation, has been shown to only benefit the wealthy while eroding the living standards of the working majority.
The failure of the political class to put the material needs of the citizenry before the prioritisation of competitive markets has led to poor outcomes for the people who voted for them. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa.
Austerity policies implemented by the ANC have gutted our socio-economic programmes, democratic institutions and public services. Poverty levels in the country are at a horrific level, while year after year, the unemployment rate remains consistently above the 30% mark. Predictably, the anger and frustration felt by the working class has, unfortunately, made them susceptible to the allure of right-wing populism.
Politics of scapegoating
Politicians recognise the fear and anger among the masses, and in an act of political survival, astutely deflect the anger and resentment onto a convenient scapegoat. Usually, a marginalised group that has no institutional power to fight back against the narrative of the government and whose suffering is of no electoral consequence. Given these parameters, the chosen scapegoats are usually undocumented immigrants.
The constant vilification of undocumented immigrants by the political establishment, who blame them for being the root of South Africa’s evils, has led to the creation of groups such as Operation Dudula and March and March, who have taken it upon themselves to fight against what they think is the problem in South Africa.
This has led to xenophobic violence being perpetrated by these groups, which have been condemned by both local monitors and international humanitarian organisations. The latest in these violent acts has been Operation Dudula and March and March occupying public clinics and physically denying people (including pregnant women and children) access if they cannot produce any form of identification.
Despite these acts being criminal and against the Constitution, South Africa’s law-enforcement and judicial apparatus is seemingly indifferent to these discriminatory acts, reminiscent of the apartheid era.
Members and proponents of these groups justify these actions by claiming that the reason why our public healthcare system is failing is the seemingly tens of millions of undocumented immigrants burdening the system. Herein lies the crux of South Africa’s xenophobia. A disturbingly large section of the population believes that there are far more undocumented immigrants than there are. Recent statistics number the immigrant (undocumented and documented) population in South Africa at roughly 4 million or 6.5% of the total population.
It is thus statistically impossible for undocumented immigrants to be the reason for the failings of our public health systems. The true cause has little to do with individual immigrants but with austerity and privatisation policies implemented at a national and provincial level by our governments. Lack of adequate spending has tightened the noose around the neck of public health, leading to understaffed facilities and a lack of medical resources.
Meanwhile, the poorer areas of Westbury in Johannesburg — a historically coloured area — were recently denied water services for more than two weeks. As residents protest for their basic needs, the response from law enforcement has been disproportionately violent, with riot police shooting rubber bullets at the residents, including the elderly.
Correctly, the blame and frustration were put at the feet of Johannesburg Water, which is owned and operated by the city as a corporate enterprise. However, during a confrontation between residents and the police, one woman was quoted as saying, “We are struggling as a coloured people” and that “foreigners have more rights in the country than South Africans”.
This couldn’t be more incorrect, as just a week before, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi announced he was going to remove informal settlements, and evict the thousands living in them, emphasising that the operation would target undocumented immigrants.
The woman (who is undoubtedly right to be angry) didn’t consider that her problems at that moment were aligned with the “foreigners” she seemed to be admonishing. Both communities are being deprived of a human right and face brutal violence from the police if they even protest for that right. This encapsulates the failure of identity politics and how it can be weaponised by right-wing populism to get in the way of class solidarity movements.
The rise of the right
Examining how right-wing populist positions are adopted by South Africa’s political class, we can see that the ANC’s “tough on immigration” stance is not an ideological policy but a political survival tactic, as it has been predicted that it will suffer catastrophic losses in next year’s local elections. Thus, it can only adopt the rhetoric that other parties have already used to make a name for themselves.
The problem with electoral republics is that politicians need to somehow convince the citizenry to vote. Which, at a time of rampant disillusionment with our democratic institutions, can be a hard task. Thus, politicians have found that a great way to mobilise voters is to have a villain that they can point to and blame for the animosity that they are feeling.
This is where right-wing populism gets a foothold. The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party has won 58 seats in the National Assembly, completely unprecedented for a party competing in its first national elections. The Patriotic Alliance (PA) has also enjoyed increased voter support, snatching wards from the Democratic Alliance in the Western Cape.
Both parties are part of a disturbing trend in South Africa’s political system, one in which not just anti-immigrant sentiment is gaining traction, but also policies that explicitly undermine our democratic constitution. How is it that these parties can maintain a base of such loyal supporters?
Parties such as MK and the PA recognise that people are angry and use that anger to mobilise people. To secure votes, they pretend to care about people’s plight while maliciously channelling that anger at the wrong target. They pretend to be the voices of the common people while simultaneously being part of the economic elite that causes their grievances in the first place.
It is because of this contradiction that they can never mobilise a base of supporters on a class perspective. Otherwise, their voters would know that their interests are much more aligned with working-class immigrants than someone like the PA’s Gayton McKenzie, Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, who has used his position in public office to enrich himself and his family, or former president and MK head Jacob Zuma, who has made a career of portraying himself as the champion of the Zulu working class, while simultaneously allowing the looting of public funds to benefit himself and his cronies.
Thus, instead of recognising that these different communities all suffer under a systematic power structure whose goal is to maximise the profits of the wealthy while further impoverishing the already poor, a more fascistic approach rallies behind ethnonationalism, saying that the reason people are marginalised is not because they are poor but because they are *insert racial group*. Right-wing politicians simultaneously recognise material disparity but tell people to ignore class consciousness and that it doesn’t matter what their class position is, so long as they are part of the in-group.
The narrative shifts from the problem being wealth inequality to undocumented immigrants, who simultaneously don’t contribute to the economy, while also stealing jobs from South Africans. The people who fall into right-wing populism don’t view their marginalisation through systematic class analysis, otherwise, they would notice that the labour market is incredibly exploitative to everyone, and that the lack of service delivery affects all poor and working-class communities.
This isn’t just purely from a lack of critical thinking. A more cynical and unfortunate reason as to why xenophobic sentiment is so alluring is that many people recognise that the people who are at fault are simply unaccountable. They subconsciously believe that you cannot fight the economic elites, as it’s too hard and their power is too vast. Thus, many people redirect that anger and frustration against a group that they do have power over.
Whether it be preventing undocumented immigrants from using public services or straight-up pogroms in townships, it gives people a sense of control and power that they feel has been denied to them. And that is what weak bullies like Operation Dudula do. Instead of focusing that anger against the people who are actually responsible, they target undocumented workers and spaza shop owners, whom they believe are the cause of their poverty.
Of course, even if you get rid of all the immigrants in South Africa, the fact remains that the corporation that employs you will still not pay you a livable wage, the government is not going to start funding clinics or schools and the potholes will not magically get fixed. All you would have done is just ensured that a group of people are worse off than you, which doesn’t actually benefit your material circumstances. There is no greater example of this than America.
The American model
The mass deportation campaign of US President Donald Trump was supported under the narrative that this was to “remove violent criminals” and “restore jobs to American citizens”. What resulted is an especially violent form of “remigration” targeting people, regardless of legal status, an act comparable to ethnic cleansing.
The Supreme Court of the United States had recently ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has the right to stop and question people based solely on ethnicity and the language they speak, a move that has been bemoaned by the lower courts as distinctly unconstitutional. To carry out this ethnic cleansing operation, the Trump administration has allocated $175 billion to the immigration enforcement apparatus, meaning it now has a larger budget than most countries’ militaries. All this money and manpower to go towards “making America great again” by removing immigrants.
And yet, things have not got better in America; in fact, they have got worse. Undocumented labour was the backbone of various industries, such as agriculture and construction, which are in a dire situation. Mass deportations, coupled with Trump’s disastrous tariff policy, have seen a massive 70% uptick in small farms declaring bankruptcy.
If you think this is purely a result of incompetence on the Trump administration’s part, it would be worth noting that a large amount of these bankrupted farms are being sold pennies-to-the-dollar to an agricultural investment company tied to Vice President JD Vance. As your attention is directed at the poor immigrant worker trying to make a living, right-wing populists are still able to rob you blind.
Gateway to Fascism
However, all that pales in comparison to the truly duplicitous nature of right-wing populism and its use by fascists. It starts with undocumented immigrants, then the president starts saying, “We have a lot of homegrown criminals, maybe we should deport them too.” Then it moves on to removing the legal status of permanent residents who have criticised the administration, to eventually denaturalising and deporting natural-born citizens for not supporting the administration. This is what the Trump administration has been doing in less than a year, all under the guise of getting rid of undocumented migrants, who he falsely claims to be responsible for most of the crime in the US.
This could be South Africa’s future if we cave in to right-wing populism. The rhetoric is there and many of the politicians behind these campaigns already have a dubious history surrounding their adherence to the Constitution. Giving in to the comfort box that this rhetoric and these policies provide opens the door to unmitigated authoritarianism. One in which the ruling elite continues to amass wealth by pointing at new scapegoats whenever they run out of an out-group.
In short, the ire directed towards undocumented migrants helps no one. If you sincerely have a problem with illegal immigration, the correct course of action is to grant mass amnesty and give those people a path to citizenship. Thus, they no longer have the threat of deportation hanging over their heads, and they will be able to advocate for better pay, which increases the pay of the entire labour force.
Combatting anti-migrant sentiment isn’t just an egalitarian principle, but is necessary to ensure that all our livelihoods are improved against the threat of right-wing populism.
Riley Singh is a freelance journalist focusing on social justice, economic and political issues and whose work has appeared in publications such as Newsweek, Jacobin and New Arab.