{"id":7575,"date":"2026-04-20T08:06:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T06:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=7575"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T06:06:41","slug":"xenophobes-provide-cover-for-crimes-of-capitalist-class-and-its-political-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?p=7575","title":{"rendered":"Xenophobes provide cover for crimes of capitalist class and its political parties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this, our final part 5b of our five-part series on xenophobia we deal with how in South\u00a0 Africa today, xenophobic forces fuelled by desperation and amplified by political opportunists like Operation Dudula are serving as unwitting pawns for the ANC-led GNU and its capitalist backers.\u00a0 Far from addressing the root causes of crumbling services, mass unemployment, and poverty, these campaigns obscure how the ANC, born as a vehicle for aspirant Black capitalists, has faithfully preserved and deepened capitalism since 1994\u2014through neoliberal policies like GEAR, corporate tax cuts, capital flight, and self-imposed debt burdens that bleed the economy dry. Here we expose the mechanics of that betrayal, from Codesa’s elite pact to today’s trillion-rand pillaging by multinationals and local tycoons and chart a path forward: working-class unity against capitalism itself.\u00a0 We conclude our series by calling for trade unions and the working class to unite against xenophobia and related forms of discrimination<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these forces inciting xenophobia are aiding and abetting the ANC-led GNU and its masters in deflecting attention from the fact that the real division in society is between the working class and the capitalist class, between the poor and the rich across all nationalities, ethnicities, gender and religions. The ANC, from birth a party of the aspirant Black capitalist, was committed to the preservation of the capitalist system into which the social layers it represented wanted to be assimilated. The ANC was founded as the representative of the aspirant black capitalist class, the infinitesimally small minority of the black population. It was committed to the preservation of capitalism to realise their ambitions to be assimilated into the commanding heights of the economy. The interests of both the aspirant black and the white-dominated capitalist class thus coincided. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managed politically till 1994 by the apartheid regime, the ANC not only took over its political management, but in no more than two years adopted the neo-liberal model of capitalism, Gear, in 1996. The class divisions already in existence deepened as Gear accelerated the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich creating the chasm to the level that the World Bank has classified SA as the world\u2019s most unequal society in the world today. Corporate tax was systematically reduced from 52% in 1993, to 27% today. Exchange control regulations were relaxed, big corporates allowed to flee and list on the London Stock Exchange. In addition, the ANC government accepted responsibility for the servicing of the debt the apartheid regime had incurred through, amongst others, the purchase of weapons to subjugate the black population. The ANC also refused to demand reparations from big business and multinationals that had help prop up apartheid including through sanctions busting. It also initiated privatisation of state-owned enterprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The logic of the ANC\u2019s commitment to bringing down the debt to GDP ratio currently at 76.90% to 60% implies that the working class has to endure more years of budget cuts meaning there will be a continued decline of working-class standards of living. It is only through the cutting of budgets for schools, housing, health care, wages and government jobs that the ANC can achieve a 60% debt to GDP ratio, one which will be accepted by local and international capitalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This debt is self-created. It has its roots in the terms of the negotiated settlement signed at the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) between what Winnie Mandela described as a process where the elites of the oppressed and the oppressors jumped into bed with each other. Codesa\u2019s strategic aim was to preserve the capitalist system under threat from an insurgent working class who had drawn the conclusion that the struggle for liberation from national oppression was inseparable from and would require the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist transformation of society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amongst the terms of the negotiated settlement that included measures brought in through Gear, was the continuation of the privatisation of state-owned enterprises already begun by the apartheid regime in the mid-to-late eighties. The more of their profits the capitalists were allowed to keep, the more they would invest and create jobs they promised. The freer they were to move their assets out of the country, the greater would be the incentive to bring in foreign direct investment and create jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A government that, from 1994 onwards, represented a population six times that for which the white minority regime had been responsible for, thus deprived itself of the revenue necessary to provide services of the same level and quality as that provided by apartheid regime to the white minority. To make up the shortfall created by in effect donating billions to big business, it borrowed on the domestic and international financial markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been rewarded by capital by a decline in domestic investment to the same level as it was in 1946 when the SA Reserve Bank started measuring this. The lack of investment has led to capacity utilisation in manufacturing falling to 65% according to StatsSA\u2019s May 2025 report. If capacity utilisation was 100% that would create a potential 450 000 additional jobs. Instead, the bosses and the government have unleashed yet another jobs bloodbath. Private companies and SOEs have shed tens of thousands of jobs last year. Manufacturing employment has fallen from 1.4 million in 2005 to 1.09 million in 2021 \u2014 a loss of 309,000 jobs in just over a decade and a half as Saftu\u2019s September 2025 statement point out. These workers are not being replaced by African migrants. Some of these companies are shutting their doors. Workers are being thrown onto the scrapheap of mass unemployment and poverty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such foreign investment as there has been, has been in stocks, bonds and currency speculative trading, not in the real economy. The Rand has consequently become one of the most volatile currencies in the world, its \u201cvalue\u201d protected by keeping interest rates at levels higher than those of its major trading partners. This in turn has encouraged the parasites in the financial markets to exploit the differential interest rate levels, leading to the so-called \u201ccarry trade\u201d. In turn this has created what is described as \u201chot money\u201d that flows into and out of the SA markets at will. That is the real purpose behind the SA Reserve Bank\u2019s inflation targeting policy justified as necessary to fight inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the reason for SA\u2019s chronic budget deficit and sovereign indebtedness. The government borrows at the rate of R2.5b every single day. The debt service costs R1.1bn per day. In addition to the collapse in domestic investment, there has been a massive outflow of capital which is legal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wealthy capitalist foreigners \u2013 the real criminals looting and pillaging the SA economy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conceal this reality from the working class, these xenophobic forces, marching to the drum beat of the capitalist class, aim to blind the working class and turn them on each other. This is the method behind the madness \u2013 the promotion of the entirely false and reactionary idea that the crisis is caused, not by the capitalist class and their main political agents the ANC and the DA now assisted by the new kitskonstabels – the PA, ActionSA, etc.-  but by working class people in other races, tribes, nations and too much gender equality and even too much \u201cdemocracy.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the 1995\u20132018 period, SA\u2019s cumulative capital flight amounted to $185.5 billion, which equates to R3.1 trillion. SA\u2019s annual gross domestic product \u2013 the value of all goods and service produced every year is approximately R4.7trillion. The country has lost approximately R134bn every year over the 23 years between 1995 and 2018. Thus, it can safely be estimated that since 2018, the capitalists have bled the country of at least R938bn. The government has also systematically raised the ceiling on the amount capitalists may invest offshore annually, so it could well amount to R1trillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illicit capital flight on the other hand amounts to approximately R400bn per annum. Judge Dennis Davies, appointed by SA Revenue Services to investigate this theft calculates that just the top 10% of the 2000 multinationals operating in SA are responsible for 90% of it.  Thus, the total in capital flight alone could be R1trillion per annum since 2018. Even without the leakage from offshore investment, the combined total of capital flight and illicit capital flows amounts to R534bn every year. To this must be added the R365bn to service the debt owed to the mashonisa in the domestic and international financial markets \u2013 not far below R1trillion per annum.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country is being raped and pillaged by rich capitalist foreigners with the active collusion of the ANC government and its partners in the GNU. <\/strong>These figures underline the complete and utter falsehoods blasting out so deafeningly from the xenophobe brigades\u2019 megaphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judging by Operation Dudula\u2019s president, Zandile Dudula\u2019s embarrassing exhibition of ignorance about the meaning of the term \u201cFrontline States\u201d on live television, it is highly unlikely that she or its leadership have any inkling of these facts. Even if they did, they know enough about public services, cuts and corruption to be aware that their propaganda is false. They are consciously misrepresenting the situation and exploiting the ignorance and desperation of their followers to feather their own nests. They must know that Operation Dudula\u2019s support is limited to a small active minority and that the idea that they could ever form a government is a fantasy. But that is not the ambition of Operation Dudula\u2019s leaders. They have registered it as a political party to give their leaders the opportunity to get into government to line their pockets through tenders and corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, their impact is more than being the useful idiots of the capitalist economic and political elite. That would be the equivalent of a benign cancer. The danger they pose is to act as a force for hatred and division within the working class, turning working class communities, significant sections of whom oppose the xenophobic witch-hunting of eg foreign nationals who own spaza shops in the townships, on themselves. The service they provide the political and economic elite is political – to protect the very system that is the source of the conditions that have created the social breeding ground for their small levels of support. This is heavily amplified by a media either hypnotised by its brazen appeal to backward ideas or even, in some cases, sympathetic to it or incapable of comprehending what it represents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile the economic and political system enabling the pillaging, looting and corruption the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry has thrown such a blinding light upon once again not so long after the Zondo Commission, remains intact. The elite benefitting from it enjoys the distraction the likes of Operation Dudula provides. It serves as a strategy to divide and rule the working class by forces that act as an auxiliary to those of the state itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How should we fight xenophobia?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A united working class is the only force that can counter this strategy. Instead of organising against organisations that perpetuate working class disunity, like Operation Dudula, the leadership of the trade unions should be organising foreign workers; fighting for them to earn the same as South African workers and demand that the Department of Labour and Employment enforce the laws protecting worker rights including the minimum wage under the Basic Conditions of Employment, Occupational Health and Safety, Employment Equity and the Labour Relations Acts for all workers regardless of nationality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xenophobia goes together with racism.  This plague can only be eradicated through workers unity in the workplace firstly but also and beyond it in the wider working-class communities in township and informal settlements. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organisations like Operation Dudula and Gatvol Capetonian share the same anti-working-class programme. Their programmes are not spears pointed at the class responsible for the crisis facing the working class \u2013 the capitalist class. Instead, they look for enemies within the working class. If the enemy is not a working class member from Zimbabwe, then the enemy must be a working-class person from the Eastern Cape or any other province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, many union leaders, fearing loss of support in their unions have succumbed to the pressure of the most politically backward of their members and society.  In its October 2, 2024, statement SAFTU commended the Department of Employment and Labour\u2019s raid on \u201cunscrupulous employers.\u201d It \u201creiterate(s) that while it is firmly opposed to xenophobia and shifting blame of the capitalist exploitation on migrant workers, it remains opposed to employers employing undocumented workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur stance has always been clear: without enforcement, labour laws are merely abstract concepts that are out of reach for the working class. The recent raid by the Department, while not a complete solution, is a promising start. It signifies the beginning of a process to transform formal labour rights into tangible benefits for workers\u201d<\/em>. Saftu, the statement continued: \u201cstrongly advocate for a more aggressive and comprehensive approach. It is crucial to prevent the erosion of the working class\u2019s hard-won gains by employers\u2019 relentless pursuit of profits.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We disagree. This argument is a concession to the government\u2019s xenophobic programme hiding behind radical rhetoric condemning exploitation. The DoEL has a long history of failing to enforce compliance with labour laws. 4.7m workers work more than the 45 hours per week that stipulated in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act should not exceed 40 hours per week. In the first quarter of the 2024\/2025 financial year (April-June 2024), 18,724 workplaces out of 77,224 inspected were found to be non-compliant with general labour laws. In August 2024, the UIF Commissioner announced that over R100 million had been recovered from various companies that had not been contributing to the fund. The total number of registered employers with the UIF is over 2.4 million. The 18 724 workplaces inspected represents 1.3% of all employers. If the rate of inspection is maintained throughout the year it would still only constitute just over 5%. The DoEL\u2019s dismal failure to monitor and enforce compliance affects all labour laws, as Saftu\u2019s own statement, citing the Department\u2019s report, confirms: \u201c<\/em>Employers were found to be non-compliant with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, Unemployment Insurance Act, Employment Services Act, Occupational Health and Safety and Emigration laws\u201d.<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DoEL\u2019s newly discovered zealotry in carrying our raids on workplaces has very little to do with protecting worker rights, any more than the raids on spaza shops by police. It is the auxiliary to the GNU and its xenophobic shadows to promote the falsehood that the collapse of public service, joblessness and widespread employer non-compliance is enabled by undocumented foreign migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A trade union federation that portrays itself not just as Pan Africanist but internationalist and socialist should be organising these undocumented workers and assisting them in obtaining the proper documentation. It represents a repudiation of the internationalist traditions on which the trade unions in SA were built. The NUM became the formidable force it became by organising all mineworkers, hundreds of thousands of whom were from neighbouring countries irrespective of nationality. It would be absurd to argue that those workers were here legally under apartheid and colonialism. Legal by the laws of oppressors and exploiters of the working class subjugated under a system of cheap labour?  Instead, Saftu issues regular statements of lamentation about the low level of union membership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disillusionment with unions derives from the fact that they do not provide workers with the most basic services including defending workplace rights. This results from the fact that that the union bureaucracies see themselves as partners with a capitalist government. In Cosatu\u2019s case it has gone so far as to support the new LRA amendments \u2013 the most serious assault on worker rights since 1994 driven by the bosses. Saftu has been correct in denouncing the LRA amendments and criticising Cosatu over its class collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Saftu has itself failed to take action to campaign for the theft of the public sector workers 2020 wage increase which entailed the tearing up of a collective agreement. This reactionary anti-working class and anti-union precedent has not only reduced public sector collective bargaining to a ritual where unions go into collective bargaining to be told what increase they will or will not get as we warned at the time. It has also emboldened the bosses and the government to amend the LRA to change the balance of forces in the workplace in the bosses favour.  Weakness invites aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another Saftu statement arguing that not all those who support Operation Dudula are necessarily xenophobic. This is another sign of the slippery slope towards class collaboration. There is a grain of truth in Saftu\u2019s statement. But only a grain. Those seduced by claims that African migrants are the cause of the multiplicity of crises the working class faces are completely wrong. Saftu should not give a finger to ignorance, prejudice let alone act as an echo of the xenophobic propaganda. The vulnerability of the declassed, marginalised and the more politically backward minority in the working class are susceptible to the appeal of the incessant xenophobic propaganda pouring for government officials, political parties and sections of the media. Their vulnerability derives from the absence of a counter-vailing voice from the organised working class. Saftu should be pointing out who the real criminals are responsible for the looting and pillaging of the country – the foreign multinationals, the capitalist class in SA and the government that serves their interests.           <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saftu should be engaging in organising a political and ideological education drive, mass action combined with supporting the legal action by the likes of SERI, LHR, KAAX, the Treatment Action Campaign etc as friends of the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the solution to crisis in the countries migrants are fleeing from will not be solved by emigrating to countries where they believe they have a better chance of survival. The answer is surely not to build Trump-like border walls and mass deportations. The answer is to assist in organising workers and the poor in those countries \u2013 to establish a southern African federation of unions and for working class communities and youth to do the same. That is surely what Pan Africanism, and socialist internationalism must mean in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mass workers party on a socialist programme to unite the working class in struggle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organised working class, students and community struggles should all converge under the banner of a mass worker\u2019s party to fight against these reactionary and divisive programmes these organisations promote. The causes of the collapse of service delivery and rise in unemployment raised by organizations such as Dudula and Gatvol lie within the capitalist system itself. All struggles for decent service delivery and jobs must be fought on the understanding that any gains won today will be threatened tomorrow for as long as the capitalist system remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no prospect of the ANC-led GNU achieving the economic growth targets that have now been lowered to 2-3% in 2030, from the 5,4% per annum for ten years consecutively set in the National Development Plan Ramaphosa released in 2012. That target was meant to eradicate extreme poverty, not poverty as such. As well as it being an admission of more than a decade of failure, lowering the target also means abandoning the attempt at lifting the 23m living below StatSA\u2019s lower bound poverty line of R1300 per month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC is a capitalist party. From its standpoint, the only \u201csolution\u201d for the crisis of their system is to make the working class pay for it. Even more savage cuts in social spending are the only way to achieve a primary budget surplus and lowering the debt to GDP ratio to 60%. This means turning improved service delivery, more jobs, and decent living standards an ever receding, unreachable dream forever.  It also means the very same conditions that made possible the growth of racism, xenophobia and far right ideas will be reproduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xenophobia in South Africa is not an isolated symptom of the crisis of capitalism, but a political strategy deliberately exploited by the ANC-led GNU and its capitalist allies to fracture working\u2011class solidarity and conceal the true source of the crisis: the unrelenting rule of capital over labour. From the ANC\u2019s embrace of neoliberalism in the 1990s to today\u2019s relentless austerity, budget cuts, and capital flight, the working class has been made to pay for a system that enriches a tiny elite while trapping millions in unemployment, poverty, and precarious migration. Organised workers, students, and communities must therefore reject the scapegoating of migrants and the politics of division, and instead build a mass working\u2011class party in South Africa centred on a socialist programme: uniting across borders, nationalities, and identities to fight for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy \u2013 the banks, the mines, big factories and commercial farms under democratic working-class control – the first step in the socialist transformation of South Africa as part of a wider socialist Africa and world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this, our final part 5b of our five-part series on xenophobia we deal with how in South\u00a0 Africa today, xenophobic forces fuelled by desperation […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7576,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575\/revisions\/7576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}