In Part 3 of our five part-series on Xenophobia 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 Part 1 we discussed 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. In part 2, we explain 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. Parts 4 and 5 continue to argue that xenophobia is being used as a tool by the political elite to distract from systemic failures to 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.
As the capitalist crisis has thrown the working class deeper into destitution, the ANC’s reaction to its consequences brought it increasingly into collision with even the socio-economic rights in the constitution handicapped as they are by the qualification that their realisation is “subject to available resources.” The fundamental human rights in the constitution are dependent upon and interwoven with these socio-economic rights. The pressure that the crisis of capitalism exerts on the former brings this capitalist government into collision with the latter. Instead, therefore, of upholding and defending the fundamental rights the constitution enjoins the state to, the ANC itself is questioning its obligations to do so. Under capitalism, especially in crisis, fundamental human rights are “unaffordable”, the peoples’ expectations that they be upheld denounced as a “culture of entitlement.”
The ANC’s budget cuts had over the years led to the closure of refugee processing centres, and staff cuts resulting in massive backlog of asylum applications as well as residential renewal work and residential permits. The crisis is also manifested simultaneously in the collapse of services, increased unemployment, deepening poverty and rising crime. It is self-created – a direct result of the impossibility of reconciling servicing the private interests of the capitalist class and the expectations of the working class and the poor for no more than a decent life.
In its attempt to deflect attention from its culpability for the crisis stemming from its neo-liberal capitalist policies, the ANC, like its capitalist political counterparts internationally, has resorted increasingly to the anti-immigration policies championed by the far right. In addition to the increasing criticism of the socio-economic and human rights in SA’s capitalist constitution, the ANC also jettisoned its Pan-Africanist-inspired foreign policy and trampled on the history of the support the masses in Africa provided and suffered for in the liberation struggle. Emboldened by the authority bestowed on them by their GNU membership, the ANC’s partners followed ANC’s politicians’ example by pumping up the anti-immigrant xenophobic volume amplified by formations outside government.
ANC politicians, DA, IFP, Cape Coloured Congress and EFF spout xenophobia and racism
In August 2022, the then Limpopo MEC for Health, Dr Phophi Ramathuba, was filmed confronting and chastising a Zimbabwean patient who was waiting for surgery at Bela Bela Hospital. In a video that went viral, Dr Ramathuba told the bedridden patient that migrants from Zimbabwe were placing a massive strain on the provincial healthcare system, stating “You are killing my health system”. She also mentioned that the Zimbabwean President did not contribute to her province’s health budget and that the health system was “not a charity.”
At the launch of the South African Medical Association (SAMA) KwaZulu-Natal provincial branch expressed concern over the access of illegal foreign nationals to healthcare facilities. “The truth of the matter is that no one amongst us would want to have illegal immigrants benefiting from our system…illegal immigrants that we have in the country are draining our resources,” Simelane said. “With that said, we cannot turn away people who are sick when they come to our facilities. It is something that we cannot do in terms of the Constitution.” (Independent Online 18/08/2025)
Former Home Affairs Minister Motsoaledi stridently opposed the extension of the Zimbabwe Exemption permits issued to Zimbabweans in 2010 after the economic collapse that followed the fraudulent 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election. Mbeki (and Zuma after him) suppressed the report he had himself ordered Judge Sisi Kampempe and Dikgang Moseneke to lead and inquire into the elections that found them not to have been free and fair.
Motsoaledi went so far as to demand that SA temporarily withdraws from the 1951 United Nations (UN) Refugee Convention. He described SA signing it as a “serious mistake” without getting exemptions for clauses giving refugees rights like employment, viewing it as overly liberal and problematic. At an election rally in the run up to the 2024 elections, Ramaphosa issued a warning to migrants that the ANC would not tolerate illegality.
The most repugnant of the ANC’s words and deeds was its actions at the Stilfontein mine outside Klerksdorp, south of Johannesburg in 2023 to combat illegal mining. The SA Police Service’s Operation Vala Emgodini – close the hole – justified as forcing trapped miners to the surface, in practice it was an Operation Abafe Emgodini (let them die in the hole) as we described it. (see our series of articles here…) Between 80 and 100 died from starvation, toxic gas inhalation or drowning. Amongst those arrested were teenagers risking their lives to put bread on the table for their families. The words of Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni must count as the cruellest, most callous exhibition of the utter inhumanity of the operation. She expressed incomprehension of and poured derision on those demanding the government observes human rights. These are criminals she stated indignantly.
The IFP has sponsored a bill to introduce quotas for foreigners in all industries. Reports are emerging of migrants being hounded out of their houses and asked to show their documents to mobs, only to be taken away unlawfully for deportation.
The EFF jumps into the populist xenophobic sewer
EFF “Commander-in-Chief”, Julius Malema, SA’s foremost political trapeze artist reflects the contradictory class pressures of its capitalist funders and its posture as a socialist party of the working class and the poor in his statements on immigration. The EFF has made a show of arriving unannounced at small businesses’ premises and demanding to know how many foreigners are employed there.
In 2022 EFF inspected employee lists at restaurants at the Mall of Africa to see the ratio of foreign-born to local employees. After the meeting with the owner at Kream restaurant Tufan Yerebakan who initially refused to meet the EFF but then gave in, Malema said business owners had agreed to a 50/50 staff split. EFF spokesperson Vuyani Pambo had earlier told Radio 702 the party wanted a 60/40 ratio of locals to migrants. At Ocean Basket in Menlyn, the EFF’s Obakeng Ramabodu met the manager and said the party was giving the restaurant two weeks to reverse its ratio of South Africans to migrant staff. He gave the manager instructions on numbers after perusing the staff list and ID or passport numbers.
The EFF was attempting to outflank Operation Dudula, then still led by Nhlanhla Lux who had marched against African migrants in Soweto and had removed foreign traders from the Bara taxi rank. They misidentified some traders and evicted a few South African traders too. Saturday 22 Jan 2022 all young people must print their CV’s or copy of their ID’s and visit restaurants to peacefully sing and demonstrate that ALL low skill jobs belong to South Africans!
Aluta✊🏾#peopleshallgovernhttps://t.co/v1tcAig2X9
— nhlanhlalux (@nhlanhla_lux_) January 19, 2022
In 2023 Malema stated: “Zimbabweans must go home to confront the Mnangagwa government instead of loitering on the streets in SA.” This call was an insult not only to Zimbabweans in SA but contradicted the position of the EFF Zimbabwean chapter who rallied behind Mnangagwa.
The self-described “Marxist, Leninist, Fanonist” EFF, received R2.64 million from companies associated with Patrice Motsepe: African Rainbow Minerals and Harmony Gold according to the 2024 Independent Electoral Commission’s political party funding report.
Funded by big business including the self-confessed corrupt tobacco tycoon Adriano Mazzotti, the “Marxists-Leninists, Fanonists” EFF is unable to call for the political and ideological independence of the Zimbabwean working class. The logical conclusion of accepting funding from capitalists such as Patrice Motsepe is that the EFF can never make a call for the political and ideological independence of the working class. It is therefore incapable of providing a working-class programme to fight xenophobia. This is why it never supported Saftu’s (now stalled) working class summit process that raised the banner of a mass worker’s party on a socialist programme in the Declaration adopted by the Saftu-convened 2018 Working Class Summit.
In 2024 the EFF marched to protest tribalism in the Limpopo government’s hiring practices. Limpopo EFF chairperson Lawrence Mapoulo accused Speaker of the Limpopo Provincial Legislature Makoma Makhurupetje of corruption and nepotism, and Limpopo Premier Dr Phophi Ramathuba of favouring Venda-speaking people when hiring staff at public hospitals across the province. “We have even seen that the premier (referring to Ramathuba) is doing the similar thing of this one (Makhurupetje), that if people don’t speak Khelodzwi, she won’t hire them.
She has also hired people from Venda only,” he alleged. “Where are the Tsongas and Pedis?” Mapoulo asked. Mapoulo further alleged that public hospitals across the province are dominated by “Ndaa” – referring to Venda people, arguing that there are no Tsonga and Pedi-speaking healthcare workers. “Ndaa” in Venda language is a greeting such as “hello or hi” and is used by men. “If you go to the hospitals, it’s only ‘Ndaa’, there’s no “Thobela” and “Avuxeni”, he said
In August this year the EFF Limpopo staged a demonstration at Polokwane municipal offices, accusing its leadership of corruption by hiring foreign nationals and ignoring local talent. Provincial chairperson Lawrence Mapoulo EFF accused Polokwane leaders of favouring Zimbabweans in jobs, preferring foreign nationals in tenders and positions and demanding that South Africans unemployed graduates be prioritised.
The EFF has so far rejected participation in the GNU. Yet it echoes the xenophobic position of parties within it. Following the medium-term budget speech Malema called for more resources for the army “to patrol SA’s porous borders to prevent foreigners from entering the country to do as they please.”
