For months, the streets of South Africa have been filled with rage. A movement known as March and March has been planning demonstrations, marching through city centers, and giving the government deadlines since early April in an effort to force undocumented foreigners to leave the nation. The most recent deadline occurred in August, during a regional summit of African leaders in Durban. The timing wasn’t coincidental.
The loudest protests to date took place on June 30. Across the nation, tens of thousands of people marched. That day alone, the government spent about R600 million, or $35 million, on security operations. Regarding that figure, Parliament had something to say. A number of members contended that the funds could have been used for infrastructure or education. Though the government believed it had little option given how unstable the situation had become, it’s reasonable to question whether they have a point.
What transpired after June 30 was meant to be a sort of resolution. It wasn’t. Since the protests started, over 160,000 immigrants from Mozambique, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other nations have left South Africa, according to official statistics. A minimum of 54,000 were officially deported. There have been at least four fatalities. Marches weren’t the end of the movement. Armed groups started robbing immigrant homes in townships like Thembelihle, south of Johannesburg, at nite. They also told scared families to return home, sometimes in Zulu, as if the language was intended to emphasize the threat.
On June 29, Eibraheem Hussein, a 60-year-old Malawian who has resided in South Africa since 2000, was assaulted at home. His tale is not unique. It is part of a pattern that has been developing for a long time; it briefly erupted in 2008 when 62 people were killed, flared up again in 2015, and is now making a comeback with what seems to be more organizational force than before.
It’s worthwhile to sit with this tension. After Nelson Mandela’s government opened South Africa’s borders in 1994 with a spirit commensurate with the moral gravity of the time, the country’s population of foreign-born people increased dramatically. However, the rate of unemployment never truly decreased. Inequality persisted. Over time, resentment began to focus on those who appeared alien, spoke a different language, or operated small businesses that the locals believed should be theirs. It hardly matters anymore if that annoyance is justified. It is now a political reality.
On August 15, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the situation and essentially apologized to foreigners for what they had gone through. He claimed that South Africa could not practice exclusion in its streets while preaching integration at summits. It was the appropriate thing to say. The speech didn’t seem to be intended to address the question of whether it has any bearing on the individuals who are excluded.
The citizens of several African governments have been evacuated. Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries have reacted with a mix of fatigue and indignation. Police in South Africa have started looking into the deaths of immigrants, but they haven’t made many arrests yet.
This is not just a law enforcement issue. It is a nation under intense economic strain that is projecting that strain onto individuals who have traveled abroad in search of what all South Africans seek: a means of making ends meet. It is simple to place the blame on immigrants. They don’t always cast ballots. Often, they are unable to. And that says more than anything else about who is shielded when a nation begins to crumble under the weight of its own unsolved issues.
