In this series of articles on Xenophobia in five parts, we set out the historical, geo-political and economic background to the rise of the far right which has placed anti-immigrant xenophobia at the centre of their programme today and conclude with a strategy to fight it. In this introduction we examine the rise of xenophobia in South Africa, especially under the ANC-led Government of National Unity (GNU), highlighting how anti-immigrant sentiment has evolved from rhetoric to organised action and state complicity. We argue that xenophobia is being used as a tool by the political elite to distract from systemic failures, divide the working class, and conceal the exploitation and plundering of resources in Southern Africa and beyond. The article further criticises the government’s response, the role of mining companies, and calls for trade unions and the working class to unite against xenophobia and related forms of discrimination.
In Part 2 we examine how apartheid-era strategies of discrimination in South Africa have inspired contemporary xenophobic, racist, and far-right movements globally, highlighting the role of economic inequality, political complicity, and organised campaigns in perpetuating anti-immigrant sentiment and undermining human rights. In Part 3 we analyse how the ANC and its partners in the GNU have increasingly adopted and promoted xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, echoing apartheid-era tactics and blaming migrants for socio-economic crises, while undermining constitutional rights and failing to address the root causes of poverty and service delivery failures in South Africa. In Parts 4 we consider how rising xenophobia, authoritarianism, and divisive identity politics—exemplified by the SANDF Cadre Group’s manifesto and mirrored in various party and government actions—are eroding South Africa’s founding principles of unity and equality, while fuelling racism, tribalism, and exclusion across society. We conclude the series by laying the blame for the failures of the socio-economic problems with the capitalists class and the political elite. We propose how we must fight xenophobia as part of the uniting the working class to fight for socialism, the only solution that can root out the conditions that fertilise the grounds for xenophobia, racism, homophobia and all form of prejudice and intolerance in society.
ANC-led capitalist Government of National Unity’s war on the working class and the poor
The year 2025 has witnessed a new upsurge in xenophobia directed against African migrants. What sets this wave apart is that it has graduated from anti-migrant messaging, marches demanding mass deportation, scapegoating for crime, allegations of placing a strain on public services and the theft of jobs, into organised criminal actions. Although Operation Dudula has dominated the headlines, other, newer formations like March on March and Professionals Unity of South Africa have either joined legal action, marches or participated in stopping and searching African foreign nationals demanding they produce papers proving they are in SA legally.
The ANC leadership must take full responsibility for these reactionary developments. It is the outcome of the more than three decades of betrayals of the working class resulting from its capitalist policies. The primary purpose of unleashing xenophobia and its blood relatives, racism, and an orchestrated attack on democratic rights, is to conceal this betrayal from the working class, divide them and weaken them.
The true extent of the ANC’s degeneration is reflected in the fact that even tragedies have served as occasions for the outpouring of xenophobia in the form of witch-hunting and criminalisation of Africans migrants. The preoccupation of government officials in the aftermath of the Isindiso, Johannesburg fire that claimed 77 lives was to find ways to blame them for the fire and persecute them as they were mourning. The families of migrants were denied access to the bodies of loved ones at a mortuary. In an exhibition of cold blooded animosity, they were sent to the citadel of xenophobia, Home Affairs, to get papers first.
The state intervention in Stilfontein and closure of mine shafts amounted to premeditated murder. In defence of the operation, the Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshaveni actually laughed at suggestions that the state has a duty to uphold basic human rights. The proper name for the state’s “Operation Vala Emgodini” (close the hole) was, as we remarked at the time, “Operation Abafe Emgodini” (let them die in the hole). If it were possible to use a fathometer, the instrument for measuring the depth of the ocean, to gauge the depth of the ANC’s moral degeneration, the reading would be unfathomable for a party that has clothed itself as the champion of human right and pan-African solidarity that its own liberation struggle benefitted from.
It is this kind of abhorrent behaviour that has served as a point of reference for the likes of Operation Dudula to physically prevent African foreign nationals from accessing public health facilities. The most repugnant of these actions include organising mobs to bar pregnant and lactating women and people with TB and HIV/Aids from entering clinics and hospitals, and the invasion of a maternity clinic. One Malawian toddler is reported to have died as a result. Operation Dudula followed this by widening its campaign to embark on a witch-hunt to remove children of African migrants from public schools. All these actions have taken place in Kwa Zulu Natal and in various Gauteng townships including Mamelodi and Soweto.
The government’s reaction to these actions has been to describe them as the exercise of the constitutional right to protest. The government’s plea that these “protests” must be carried out without disrupting social services, has not only provided Operation Dudula’s actions with legitimacy; it has incited the further mayhem that followed. The SA Police Service self -justification that they are merely “maintaining law and order’’ has encouraged the very opposite. They have covered up their condonation and inaction by taking shelter behind the lack of resources. They assert that it is neither their duty to police every protest nor could they be expected to deploy personnel to every one of them. African foreign nationals now live in fear under this reign of terror unleashed against them.
GNU – united in xenophobia
The MWP condemns Operation Dudula’s xenophobic campaign. We also condemn the reaction of the state, the SA Police Service, the Department of Home Affairs (DOH), and the Department of Labour and Employment (DoE) for sheltering hypocritically under the claim that they are defending the “rule of law” and fighting crime.
In fact, the GNU has become a reactionary fraternity collaborating in the incitement of xenophobic hatred through the deployment of government departments and instruments of state coercion. Their purpose is to (i) deflect attention from the social, economic and political crisis capitalism is gripped by and that they are responsible for (ii) to divide the working class and turn them against each other, to divide and rule them as the crisis of their system requires iii) intensify the war on the working class. The Government of National Unity has in reality acted as the enablers of Operation Dudula’s barbaric actions, instigating its anarchy.
We call upon the working class to resist this attempt to turn us against foreign nationals. Xenophobia is a weapon of class war that opens the door to further divide and weaken the working class using xenophobia’ and its blood relatives, racism, tribalism and ethnicity.
The overwhelming majority of African migrants are refugees who have fled from economic collapse, grinding poverty, mass unemployment, exploitation, and violence.
False, inhumane distinction between economic and political refuge – a worldwide practice
We completely reject the cynical distinction between political and economic migration. It is not only absurd but inhumane to disqualify people fleeing destitution from eligibility on the grounds that their plight is “economic” as opposed to “political.”
It firstly deliberately narrows the grounds on which asylum may be applied to proof of individual persecution. On that basis people taking pre-emptive action by fleeing from the likelihood of attacks, killings by eg the warlords using forced labour including pregnant women and children in the DRC mines, do not qualify for asylum.
Human rights Watch reports that since 2015, Cameroonian soldiers routinely tortured, assaulted, and summarily deported tens of thousands of Nigerian asylum seekers fleeing from Boko Haram’s barbaric kidnappings, rape and beheadings in remote border areas, denying them access to the UNHCR. Deportations rose to 100 000 by 2017 and continued afterwards. Accompanied by violence and abuse, Nigerians were told to “go and die in your own country”.
Based on proving ‘political persecution” Sudanese people fleeing from almost certain death and mass rapes by the barbarous Rapid Support Forces would not be able to prove eligibility. The political instability and mayhem by political elites armed and finance by foreign capitalist elites and governments, have dire economic consequences. To distinguish between the economic and political factors giving rise to migration is a deliberate attempt to absolve responsibility for offering protection from human rights abuses.
This same cynical distinction between economic and political migration is being used by right wing government in the European Union and far right forces in general to absolve themselves from responsibility to provide protection under treaties and conventions their government have signed up to. It is not only absurd but inhumane to disqualify people fleeing from destitution from eligibility on the grounds that their plight is “economic” as opposed to “political.”
The UK, under both the Conservative and right wing Starmer Labour governments denounced the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as well as the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights to enforce its provisions as they planned to deport refugees to Rwanda. The 1953 Convention encompasses the right to life, a ban on slavery, protection against torture and degrading treatment, freedom of expression, prohibition of discrimination, and the right to family life.
All 27 EU member states have signed the European Convention on Human Rights, but the EU has yet to accede to the treaty, despite a legal obligation to do so under the Lisbon Treaty. The European capitalist class is refusing to take any responsibility for the disastrous consequences of their role in creating the crisis in the countries migrants are fleeing from. The crisis is caused by the combination of the neo-liberal economic policies imposed on them that are further impoverishing already poor countries, as well as the catastrophic destruction of the US wars they have supported in the Middle East and military interventions in Africa. These policies, advocated and enforced by powerful economic actors and international institutions, further entrench poverty and inequality. By promoting deregulation, austerity, privatisation, and market liberalisation, neo-liberal policies dismantle public services and reduce social protections, leaving vulnerable populations with few means of support. This deepens the deprivation experienced by people in affected countries, fuelling desperation and prompting many to seek better opportunities abroad.
Migration driven by capitalist elite’s creation of mass unemployment, poverty – SA’s role
The rampant poverty in the southern African region, in fact on the entire African continent and the neo-colonial world, has sparked mass migration occurring worldwide. The unbearable conditions driving this mass migration are a direct result of resource plundering by imperialist powers and their local collaborators. In many regions, including the Middle East, wars and the arming of various militias by competing powers such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have further destabilized societies.
On the African sub-continent, the SA government is facilitating this by propping up political regimes maintaining their rule in the form of various shades of dictatorships. This comprador bourgeoisie manages the plunder of their countries on behalf of western and now Russian, and Chinese imperialism as well as Middle Eastern sub-imperialism. Like the apartheid regime before it, the ANC government, now with its GNU partners, plays the role of a sub-imperialist constabulary providing political protection to regimes facilitating the plunder of their countries on behalf of SA mining capital and imperialism old and new in general.
The masses in southern Africa are drowning in a sea of destitution, poverty and mass unemployment. Historically the SA capitalist class has dominated the region economically exploiting it both for cheap labour and mineral resources as a sub-imperialist hegemon for more than a century under the protections of the colonial and apartheid regimes. This has continued since “liberation” in 1994. Aided and abetted by the ANC government, now in collaboration with its GNU partners, traditional established SA mining companies have been joined by their black apprentices in continuing to play a major role in the economic subjugation of the region.
The mining industry employs more than 450,000 workers, of which 35,000 are migrants from neighbouring countries. These are among the industry’s more skilled and experienced workers. The number of migrant workers has decreased sharply from 140,000 in 2010 but so has the total number of workers employed in the industry. About 30,000 foreign migrant workers are expected to have left the mining industry through natural attrition by 2030, leaving just 5,000.
The SA governments of the democratic era – GNU 1.0, the ANC and GNU 2.0 – continued essentially the same foreign policy: political, economic and military interventions in pursuit of the same aims: the plundering of human and mineral resources and protection of domestic capitalist and imperialist interests. From the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, southern Africa has been converted from Frontline State allies against white minority rule into a corrupt neo-liberal belt overseeing the exploitation of their countries’ resources, the working class and the poor. A similar process has unfolded in post-independence Africa further north.
This has entailed:
- SA’s 1998 invasion of Lesotho
- Condoning Lesotho political parties’ funded by and colluding with illicit mining syndicates
- The disastrous deployment of SA National Defence Force troops in the failed attempt to prop up the Central African Republic dictator François Bozizé, himself in power through a coup, resulting in the death of 13 SA soldiers in the Battle of Bangui in March 2023.
- The cover-up up of Mugabe’s rigged 1998 elections by both Mbeki and Zuma
- Ramaphosa’s congratulations and attendance of Mnangagwa’s presidential inauguration despite vote rigging, fraud, intimidation, abductions and killings in the 2023 elections which even the historically cautious boys’ clubs of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s Electoral Observation Mission (Sein) could not ignore
- The failed peacekeeping missions in the DRC and Mozambique
- Remaining on their knees in collusion with the SADC unable to compel King Mswati III to end Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy in favour of even a bourgeois parliamentary democracy
- All whilst not once engaging in debates about how close it is to the ever-receding aims of the NDR (national democratic revolution) at its recent National General Council.
ANC-led GNU provides political cover for SA mining companies looting the DRC
SA mining companies are in the forefront of the looting and pillaging of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example. Alongside US, Belgian, French and Chinese vampires, they are sucking out that country’s economic life blood in the form of minerals. Thess SA mining companies include the likes of Anglo American, Glencore, AngloGold Ashanti, African Rainbow Minerals and Bosielo Lefoko Holdings and Vuka.
Under headlines such as, “Business in the DRC is booming for SA mining exporters”, multi-award-winning Cape Town-based events organiser, the Vuka Group, boasted about reaching the 20th anniversary of showcasing the country’s looting and pillaging in exhibitions and stakeholder conferences. On 17 November 2025, it reported from Lubumbashi that its annual “DRC Mining Week” held 14-16 June, had won the title of “Event of the Year” at the Katanga Awards. SA’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition hosted a pavilion for the fifth time after sponsoring 22 companies to showcase their offerings the year before. Vuka’s claim that it is “dedicated to supporting the DRC’s transformation into a globally competitive mining and industrial powerhouse” is no doubt the pretext the vampires use to strangle the country’s economy and its people.
The DRC is the world’s richest country in mineral resources, with an estimated $23 Trillion worth of mineral deposits still untapped. This orchestrated plunder has plunged most workers into the vast informal sector, leading to a least 50% underemployment and food insecurity.
Warlords and criminals use the mining industry as their primary source of funding, forced labour including children and pregnant women, and illicit trade to control mineral-rich areas and engage in the conflict that has torn the country into two as the M23 group lays siege to the Eastern DRC with over 200 000 forced to flee their homes. The wars in the Great Lakes region are a direct result of the conflicting interests of competing elites. The agreement the US has just forced on the presidents Paul Kagame and Felix Tshisekedi of Rwanda and the DRC is a neo-colonial treaty enabling the US to get a greater share of the country’s resources. It is not so much a peace deal as a deal for the seizure of a much greater piece of the DRC.
Trade Unions in SA must oppose xenophobia uncompromisingly
The poisonous fumes of xenophobia are being consciously pumped into the political atmosphere to distract the attention of the oppressed and exploited in all countries from these parasitic activities abroad and domestically. These ideas and their related actions are neither accidental nor spontaneous. They are consciously propagated to incite intra-working class hatred. It is the modern form of the age-old tactic of divide-and-rule by a ruling political and economic elite whose capitalist system is facing its deepest crisis since the 1930s.
The trade unions in SA must lead the working class in unity and mobilise against xenophobia and its blood relatives, racism, misogyny and religious bigotry sprouting out of the toxic soil fertilised by the crisis of capitalism. 70% of the people in the DRC live below $2.15/day. This amounts to R48/day – almost the same as the R49/day below which two thirds in SA live. The working class and the poor majority in both countries have much more in common with each other than their respective capitalist political and economic elites.
