In this Part 4 of our 5-part series on Xenophobia wecontinue to argue that xenophobia is being used as a tool by the political elite to distract from systemic failures to divide the working class. The article end by exposing five myths of xenophobia and refutes each of those claims. In Parts 5a and b we discuss how the government conceals the exploitation and plundering of resources in Southern Africa and beyond and criticise their response to the role of mining companies in looting of the continent’s resources. The series concludes with calls for trade unions and the working class to unite against xenophobia and related forms of discrimination.
Since the 2024 elections, the actions of the GNU have revealed it to be a coalition of xenophobes united in common purpose. Led by the ANC they have rummaged through the rubbish heap of apartheid history and retrieved of the white minority regime’s weapons of choice and repurposed it for the democratic era based on the basic human rights not to suffer discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity or nationality: “swart gevaar” (black danger).
In unison they promote the myths that that the country is swamped by undocumented migrants; that they are responsible for mass unemployment, stealing jobs, increased crime and are a burden on the hospital and education systems. Each of these claims are an exaggeration so gross, it comes into violent conflict with reality. (5 myths refuted box)
The most brazen example of the ANC’s hypocrisy is the construction of the GNU out of political parties with a track record of open xenophobia and racism. Gayton McKenzi’s Patriotic Alliance (PA) openly promotes the entirely false and racist notion that the ANC favours Blacks over Coloureds. Responding to a call for trauma counsellors proficient in languages such as Chewa, Portuguese, and Shona to assist victims’ families, following the George building collapse, the worst in SA’s history, the PA’s Gayton Mckenzie, a supporter of Israel’s Gaza genocide, put on another display of cold blooded callousness suggesting that foreign nationals in need of counselling should get help in their own countries. He called for the denial of medical treatment for African foreign nationals injured after the George building collapse.
The Herald (12/01/2023) quotes him demanding that “All children of illegal foreigners shouldn’t be allowed in our schools in South Africa. “Home affairs should visit all schools before we do; this is nonsense. We must now explain to South African parents why their children cannot be placed.”
In January 2022, the Patriotic Alliance combed through the Johannesburg City Council building, counting and threatening foreign-born staff. Party leader Gayton McKenzie amplified videos of young party activists shouting at council employees.
The @CityofJoburgZA is full of foreigners working there whilst we have unemployed graduates sitting at home, we have instructed some of our Councilors to go deal with this matter, The Chief Whip has a Zimbabwean office manager. pic.twitter.com/K0mAJQCvyc
— Gayton McKenzie (@GaytonMcK) January 18, 2022
McKenzie, who’s party has popularised the slogan “Abahambe” (IsiZulu for “let them go) has deployed teams across the country who are confiscating expired goods from migrant-owned spaza and small shops. He has said 2022 will be the year of the campaign against migrants working in South Africa and the businesses that employ them.
Ramaphosa has rewarded McKenzie for being so eminently qualified to “unite the nation” by appointing him Minister of Sports Arts and Culture (DSAC). In one of his actions as Minister, McKenzie launched a vile tirade against foreigners in his department. Addressing his ministry’s chairpersons and CEOs DSAC entities – including museums, theatres and heritage and funding agencies – he unleashed a shocking tirade aimed at “foreigners”. “Some of you here [have] the audacity to hire foreigners instead of South Africans,” he boomed. “I don’t care how you used to do it. But for as long as I am the minister, there will be no foreigner [our italics] that will work in an entity while a South African can do the same thing.” He ordered that all “foreigners” employed by departments needed to be “out in three weeks”. (Daily Maverick – 19/05/2025).
Xenophobia propaganda of the deed
Leon Schreiber appointed Minister of Home Affairs (DHA) from the DA, a party that has tried and failed to erase its character as a White party that has similarly exploited the fears of sections of the Coloured and Indian population of being “swamped” by the Black majority.
With these credentials, Schreiber set the tone for the GNU in one of his first acts as DHA Minister – a despicable xenophobic witch-hunt of SA beauty pageant contestant, the daughter of a Nigerian father and Mozambican mother, 23-year-old Chidimma Adetshina over her mother’s alleged illegal status. Whether her mother has acquired her status illegally or not should have had no impact her status as a SA born and bred citizen. But the equivalent of a shameful public lynching ensued lead by the PA’s McKenzie’s hysterical demands for her disqualification. Under this shameful and unbearable pressure, Adetshina withdrew from the contest even before the investigation had been concluded or anything proven.
Under Schreber, the witch hunting of African foreign nationals has been ramped up through intensified inspections at workplaces like restaurants, spaza shops, farms, and mines. This campaign is conducted in conjunction with the SAPS, the new Border Management Agency (BMA) and the Department of Employment and Labour through which a high number of arrests were carried out and “direct deportations” made at the border.
Around 51,000 people were removed in the 2024, a nearly 20 percent increase from the previous year. Mimicking the US’s xenophobe and racist-in-chief, Trump, the DHA is aiming to more than triple previous figures, though a specific, fixed target number has not been publicly stated. Recent figures indicated that 19,750 people were deported in just four months (May-August 2025).
Not to be outdone, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has issued the demand “document yourself or you leave us in peace”. In his shameless regurgitation of the complete falsehood that most informal settlement residents are undocumented migrants; Lesufi announced a strict crackdown on illegal informal settlements. He claimed that informal settlements are occupied by “mkhukhu (shack) mafias” that the government has no responsibility to provide housing or services for.
He said he had instructed his “team” to begin tearing down informal settlements in the early hours of the morning. “I said to the team, we are going to dismantle this informal settlement at 2am. The patience of this government, and the patience of our people in our country, and the accommodating nature of us to ensure that we work within the human rights limitations, has been abused and taken advantage of,” he said.
This is a cynical attempt to distract attention from the disastrous failure of the government’s housing policy. The backlog was 2.5 million countrywide in 2022 and is higher today. In Johannesburg alone. With only 2 500 houses built in 2022/23 it would take over 100 years to overcome the 500 000 backlog. Yet Johannesburg burg receives over 130 000 new residents annually through internal migration from e.g. Kwa Zulu Natal and the Eastern Cape – one of the country’s poorest and most corrupt provinces, as well as the poor from neighbouring countries ravaged by their corrupt elites propped up by the ANC government. All of them are seeking a chance to escape destitution.
Alarmingly the implication of Lesufi’s threats is that the Gauteng provincial government will ignore the law that requires the provision of alternative accommodation before eviction. To defend these inhumane actions, Lesufi is either suffering from amnesia or prefers to forget the history of the origins of black townships in general and the world-renowned Soweto that falls under his provincial jurisdiction. Lesufi is prepared to take away from Black African foreign nationals the very rights he himself once fought for.
A significant number of today’s townships originated as squatter camps. Lesufi’s place of birth, Daveyton, was established as a “model township” by the apartheid regime to accommodate residents of the Apex squatter camp in 1955. Soweto itself originated as a slum. Orlando was central to significant squatter movements, especially in the 1940s, led by James “Sofasonke” Mpanza, where homeless people occupied vacant land, forcing the authorities to create emergency camps like Central Western Jabavu and Moroka. Daveyton residents were fortunate by comparison to the approximately 3,5 million Blacks (including Coloured and Indians) who were victims of the apartheid regime’s violently repressive policy of forced removals.
Lesufi’s plans for the forced dismantling of squatter camps and the deportations, mimics, not only the apartheid regime’s “swart gevaar” propaganda, but the actions it took to eradicate this “black danger.” Lesufi’s threats to use evictions of undocumented migrants mimics the methods of the xenophobe and racist occupant of the White House in the US.
The migration into the cities was driven by dispossession and impoverishment designed to provide a reliable supply of cheap labour. It was also fuelled by the needs particularly of secondary and tertiary industry that grew out of mining. The boundaries of the Bantustans where the apartheid regime – themselves became “porous”.
Designed as reservoirs of cheap labour after colonial dispossession, the apartheid regime converted them into Bantustans to imprison the Black majority as non-citizens of “White SA”, could exercise their rights “citizenship” – the national oppression of the Black majority was thus based on capitalist exploitation.
What the white minority regime imposed on Blacks, Lesufi wants to impose on…Blacks from African countries. The majority of these “foreigners” are from neighbouring countries whose labour was crucial in the construction of the mining industry, the foundation of today’s economy. Abahlali baseMjondolo rightly denounced Lesufi’s plan as a war on the poor. Rubbishing his claims that informal settlements are swamped by Black African foreign nationals, they pointed out that they make up more than 19% of total residents.
5 Myths of Xenophobia — Refuted
Myth 1: Migrants are “swamping” South Africa
Fact: Migrants make up less than 8% of the population. Stats SA’s 2023 Migration Profile Report confirms that international migrants are a small minority in South Africa’s population of over 63 million. Most residents in informal settlements are South Africans themselves. Claims of being “overrun” are pure fear‑mongering.
Myth 2: Migrants steal jobs
Fact: Unemployment is driven by capitalist crisis, corruption, and austerity — not migrants. Official unemployment sits at 31.9% (≈8 million people), with youth unemployment above 70%. These figures are driven by capitalist crisis, corruption, and austerity, not migration. Migrants often take the lowest‑paid, most precarious jobs that locals are unwilling or unable to accept. The real thieves are bosses exploiting cheap labour.
Myth 3: Migrants cause crime
Fact: Crime is rooted in poverty, inequality, and state failure. Studies show no evidence that migrants commit more crime than locals. Politicians scapegoat migrants to hide their own failures.
Myth 4: Migrants drain hospitals and schools
Fact: The real drain is budget cuts and mismanagement. Migrants are less than a fraction of patients and learners. Denying care or education violates constitutional rights and basic humanity. Migrants make up only a fraction of patients and learners, while systemic underfunding affects everyone.
Myth 5: Deportations and evictions “protect” South Africans
Fact: Forced removals echo apartheid’s brutality. They do nothing to solve housing backlogs or unemployment. Instead, they divide the working class and shield the capitalist elite from accountability. South Africa deported 46,898 people in 2024/25, the highest in five years, costing taxpayers over R52 million — yet housing backlogs and unemployment remain untouched. Illegal evictions of migrants have been condemned in court, showing how these actions violate rights without addressing structural crises.
