MWP introduction
We publish below an article by Peluola Adewale of the Democratic Socialist Movement, our sister organisation in Nigeria, whose internationalist argument has acquired renewed urgency as xenophobic violence intensifies ahead of South Africa’s local government elections. Comrade Pelad draws attention to the hypocrisy of the Nigerian capitalist elite who like others in Africa, eg recently in Tanzania and Kenya, have used xenophobia for the same reason as the SA ruling elite – to divide and rule. They exploit working-class communities’ anger over unemployment, poverty, crime and collapsing services to turn the victims of the capitalist crisis against each other, providing political cover to those responsible. Mass unemployment is much worse than the official unemployment rate which excludes discouraged workers who have given up searching for jobs they cannot find. Recent reports of March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and her husband’s lucrative multi-million Rand Kwa Zulu Natal government contracts, expose the material ties between an organisation claiming to speak for the dispossessed and the state whose failures create their desperation. March and March’s cooperation with Afriforum further exposes the reactionary forces finding common ground in anti-migrant agitation that US president Trump has inflamed into the racist accusation that blacks in SA are carrying out a genocide against white farmers. Police standing by during looting leave foreign nationals exposed to organised intimidation and dispossession. Migrant workers did not close the factories, impose austerity, loot municipal resources or condemn millions to unemployment.
SAFTU’s statement of 10 October rightly condemns xenophobic violence and exposes the distortion of the Constitutional Court’s asylum ruling. Yet it weakens its own opposition by describing frustration over ‘unmanaged borders and pressure on scarce resources’ as legitimate, conceding ground to the propaganda through which migrants are blamed for the deprivation of working-class communities. Anger over unemployment, inadequate housing and collapsing public services is entirely justified. But attributing these conditions to migrants requires an uncompromising rebuttal. Scarcity is being imposed through austerity, the destruction of jobs and the subordination of public provision to private profit. Labour must expose those responsible and rebut the exaggerated claims used to turn desperation into hostility towards migrants. Government hypocrisy and police complicity must of course be exposed. But the forces of right wing, xenophobic and racist reaction must be countered through independent working-class mobilisation. SAFTU should take the initiative in calling on the federations to prepare a national day of action, rolling mass action and a 24-hour general strike against xenophobia. Unions must unite SA and migrant workers around demands for compliance with the minimum wage, for permanent jobs, living wages, housing and properly funded public services for all. Siyafana Sonke’s proposed 30th October for the national day of action, should become a step towards that sustained mobilisation, extending beyond symbolic protest and appeals to the authorities into organised workplace and community action. SAFTU’s Jobs Bloodbath Campaign offers a means of bringing these struggles together around common demands. Adewale’s article makes clear why this united struggle must extend across borders.
XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS IN SOUTH AFRICA: Failure of Capitalism
Peluola Adewale
Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) (CWI in Nigeria)
Another wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa has affected Nigerians alongside other African migrants in South Africa. Some have been killed or injured while shops have been destroyed and looted in the recurrent violence.
There have been reports of the South African police supporting the violence or looking the other way. There is also tacit support of the Cyril Ramaphosa government and African National Congress (ANC) for the action partly because of the local government elections in November 2026 given the growing unpopularity of the government and ANC. Besides, the Ramaphosa government is happy that foreigners are blamed for its own failure to guarantee a decent life for the majority of South African people. Ahead of the June 30, 2026 deadline given to the African immigrants to leave South Africa by the xenophobic groups like Operation Dudula and March on March, many African countries including Nigeria repatriated their citizens.
NIGERIAN CAPITALIST RULING ELITE ALSO CULPABLE
However, the working people of Nigeria must not be deceived by the grandstanding of the Nigerian ruling elite, talking tough over the attacks in South Africa. First, it is the ruinous anti-poor policies of all capitalist governments in Nigeria since independence and particularly since 1999 that are responsible for the collapse in living standards and the lack of decent jobs and opportunities, forcing layers of the working class, middle class and youth in Nigeria to run out of the country in pursuit of greener pastures. While Nigeria has effectively become one of the poverty capitals of the world despite its enormous riches in human and material resources, the other side of the coin is that at the same time Nigeria is home to the richest black person from Africa.
Suffice to add that this paradox actually defines the real nature and character of the capitalist system as an unjust and inequitable system. This means that running out of the country has now become the only option which is open to many to escape the crisis. While the world is focused on the xenophobic attacks in South Africa at the moment, thousands more of Nigerians and African nationals are trekking through the Sahara desert and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of reaching European shores.
FAILURE OF ANC
In a similar vein, it is the ruinous anti-poor policies of decades of apartheid and post-apartheid ANC governments that are responsible for the inequality and mass poverty that grip the majority of the black South African populace. After over three decades of self-government, the hopes and aspirations of the black population have been shattered with the ANC becoming a tool for the implementation of anti-poor capitalist policies which have created a new black capitalist elite while driving the majority of blacks further down the ladder. The Cyril Ramaphosa ANC government is simply a continuation of the ruinous past, only the clique at the top has changed. As a result of the despair and desperation and with the South African labour leadership not mounting an effective struggle to unite the working class and find a lasting way out of the crisis, the poorest sections and potentially even layers of the workers and middle classes of the South African population are being led erroneously to believe that other African nationals including Nigerians are responsible for their plight.
NOT PECULIAR TO SOUTH AFRICA
However, while South Africa is currently the epicenter of xenophobic attacks in Africa, such reactionary responses to the crises of capitalism are not peculiar to South Africa alone. It is much like we saw happen first in Ghana in 1969 when Nigerians were forcefully expelled from the country and secondly in Nigeria in 1983 during the infamous “Ghana must go” episode following the end of the oil boom of the 70s. Over two million Ghanaians and other African nationals were forcefully expelled by the Shagari government then. This shows how the capitalist ruling elite often fan the embers of division in order to turn the attention of the masses away from the real causes of their misery. They are comfortable when the problems are not put at their doorstep. Not only against foreigners, such tactics are also used by rival factions of the Nigerian ruling class, especially during elections, denouncing so-called “outsiders” from other Nigerian states.
FOR WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY AND UNITY
All the above therefore means that in the real sense of the word, the poor South African workers and youth who are involved in these xenophobic attacks as well as the Nigerian and other African migrants who are being attacked are victims of the same conditions of capitalism. The only way out is for a united struggle of the working classes of African countries to challenge and defeat their capitalist ruling classes and enthrone a workers-led government armed with socialist policies.
South Africa’s economy and Nigeria’s economy are sizeable and have the potential to rapidly provide a decent and happier life for a majority of their populations if they are run in the interests of the working people. South Africa’s expanded unemployment rate, which includes discouraged work-seekers who have given up looking for work, exceeds 40%. Over 60% of Black South Africans live in poverty, over 30 years after the end of the Apartheid regime was meant to have brought equality. But the end of Apartheid did not end capitalism and the insatiable greed of the capitalist elite. Even the World Bank describes South Africa as “the most unequal country in the world by any measure”.
Therefore, these xenophobic attacks in South Africa and the daily insecurity and violence as well as the deepening economic crisis in Nigeria itself show the urgency for mass struggle to develop and mass workers’ parties built to end this unjust system. Otherwise, the alternative is barbarism. Under a workers-led government armed with socialist policies, the key sectors of the economies of both countries will be placed under public ownership and democratic management. By doing this it is possible to begin to utilise the enormous wealth of both countries, and set an example to Africa as a whole to break with capitalism and begin to provide decent jobs, quality public education and health care and a living wage for all.
Therefore, rather than call for attacks on South African businesses and even nationals, the working people and youth must place demands on the Nigerian government to begin to provide affordable and quality education, decent jobs and opportunities. It is the absence of these which is one of the reasons many Nigerians are running out of the country in droves only to be slaughtered or sold as slaves in Libya and injured, attacked or killed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
Therefore, the labour movement in Nigeria must take a bold step by calling solidarity marches to condemn the xenophobic attacks while also placing the blame on the government whose ruinous policies are responsible for the movement of able-bodied Nigerians abroad in search of greener pastures. With such mass rallies, labour can begin to build the momentum for a 24-hour general strike and mass protest, as a first step, for a living wage, reversal of anti-poor policies, for decent jobs for all and investment in public education and healthcare, nationalisation of the key sectors of the economy under democratic workers’ control and management.
By and large, while xenophobic attacks must be unequivocally condemned, it should be stressed that anti-poor policies of the capitalist governments of South Africa, Nigeria and other African countries and failure of capitalism in the neo-colonial economies create the conditions for the menace. So, it requires unity and solidarity among the working people of Africa in struggle for socialism to begin to overcome and defeat xenophobia and all divisions.