On 30 June, an assortment of figures and organisations is expected to stage protests in South Africa against what they call “illegal” migration. The date is also the deadline they set for the government to meet their demands to “put South African citizens first” through, among other actions, halting the processing of refugee applications, initiating a massive deportation campaign, and committing funds to fence the country from its northern neighbours. In addition, the organisers called for undocumented migrants to leave by that date, under thinly veiled threats of violent consequences for those who do not.

Individuals behind this “citizen-first” movement insist that they are against unauthorised migration, regardless of the identity of the person. But much of the rhetoric and violence has been directed at nationals of other African countries, even those authorised to live and work in the country and those granted asylum under the country’s commitments to international law. In recent weeks, thousands of Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Malawians, Ghanaians and others, documented and otherwise, have sought shelter or fled, fearing that threats of widespread violence will materialise, as they did in 2019, 2015 and 2008.

The targeting of fellow Africans in this way has prompted many to characterise South Africa’s citizen-first politics as Afrophobia, a claim denied by some leading the movement. Yet the issues at play point to something deeper. They paint a picture of a country navigating an interregnum. As the political vision for Black liberation that guided the first decades of the post-apartheid period wanes, the stage is set for a successor to set the terms for what comes next.

Facts, fiction and pain

In this moment, the same kinds of narratives are evident as those seen in other parts of the world. African immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are accused of “invading” the country. They’re said to be stealing jobs and other economic opportunities supposedly belonging to South Africans. They are accused of crimes, adding to the burden on government services, and exploiting poor and working-class customers and workers of migrant-owned businesses.

There is little beyond anecdote and ethnoracial stereotypes behind these claims, says Khwesi Mabasa, 2020 AFRE fellow and policy expert. He writes that unemployment in South Africa is not primarily due to migration. It is driven by structural factors linked to the decline of sectors that historically employed large sections of the Black population. Migrants are a small proportion of the labour force, he adds.

Indeed, government statistics show that foreign-born residents make up 5.1% of the population. Statistics on undocumented residents are harder to come by, however, but migration researchers contend that it is nowhere near some of the figures suggested recently. Moreover, migration has had a positive economic effect in South Africa.

Khwesi notes, too, that the country has a two-tier labour market. One tier is smaller and workers therein enjoy all the rights and protections that come with standard employment, while workers in the other, much larger tier do not and are vulnerable to dismissal and exploitation. The situation makes it possible for employers to selectively hire workers they can more easily take advantage of — particularly undocumented migrants. This, the role of private actors and businesses, is often overlooked in the rush to blame migrants or the state, he writes.

The persistence of apartheid spatial geography also plays a role in how the contestation over the facts is unfolding. South Africa’s urban landscape is still one in which race and class determine who people interact with daily in their neighbourhood. Research suggests migrants are often concentrated in inner cities, townships and informal settlements, where many poor and working-class Black South Africans also live. So, while figures confirm the scale of migration to be small at a national level, it cuts against the reality in these majority Black neighbourhoods.

Facts are important. But more is needed to change hearts and minds, says 2019 AFRE fellow Koketso Moeti, founder of the activist platform amandla.mobi.

Poor and working-class Black people, whether citizen or migrant, suffer everyday indignities of having to make potentially life-threatening trade-offs between their basic rights, Koketso says. She gives the example of a mother who risks her safety by walking hours to work in the dark, early mornings to save her transport fare for food and school supplies to secure her children’s future. Facts will not sooth the pain of these kinds of terrible choices in a society that has come to accept them as normal. What is also needed are human-to-human connections that affirm that the situation is unjust, unacceptable and part of shared struggles that call for a collective response, Koketso says.

Likewise, 2021 AFRE fellow Mahoro Semege, a film, media and cultural studies scholar, suggests that the pain of such indignities is being expressed presently as fear and anger. These emotions trigger the human survival mode and bypass the logic centres of the brain, says Mahoro. This has allowed some political actors to tap into fear and anger to paint immigrants and refugees as the cause of the pain so that they can advance their own agendas, he says.

The long shadow of the past

Citizen-first activists also invoke the country’s feted post-apartheid Constitution to justify their frustration and actions. Earlier this year, March and March, one of the organisations that called for the 30 June protests, decried the paucity of change since the 1996 adoption of the document.

“30 years later, we look back with so much mixed feelings, what has democracy and freedom done for us, are we really free and, if not, what must we do?” they said.

However, the scholarship of 2020 AFRE fellow and law professor Joel Modiri suggests that the problem may predate the 1996 Constitution. Joel argues that the problem is South Africa itself as it was conceived and evolved. He writes that South Africa is a political entity founded on more than three centuries of colonialism, slavery and racial subjugation justified by claims of white supremacy. Well before the 1996 document was drafted, the political vision that triumphed in the country’s liberation movement had foreclosed possibility of a clean break from these foundations and sought instead recognition and inclusion in South Africa as it was, he argues. As a result, the very idea of South Africa, with its colonial underpinnings, unremedied injustices and deep structural inequalities, is the actual problem.

Whether other, competing political visions would have led more decisively to a just and equitable society is moot. What is still up for contestation, however, is the vision that will guide the country into the future — a contestation currently playing out in debates about migration.

A shared struggle for human dignity

The Constitution also enshrines rights and protections for all who live in it, including refugees and asylum seekers. Together with the 1951 Refugee Convention, it drives the government’s duties in this regard, says Mahoro, who holds refugee status in South Africa. Under pressure from citizen-first politics, the government has put forward a reform to its refugee and asylum-seeker management system. Mahoro argues that if the reform becomes law as written, it threatens to strip asylum seekers of agency, a key aspect of human dignity.

At the heart of the reform is how South Africa plans in future to implement the “first safe country” principle, which requires that asylum seekers apply for refugee status in the first safe country they reach. Currently, each application is assessed on its merits. An applicant’s individual circumstances are considered, since what is safe for one person might not be safe for another.

In the cacophonous debates on migration, belief has taken hold that asylum seekers traverse many safe countries before applying in South Africa, preferring it as a destination. This belief is repeated in the reform, which looks set to remove consideration of individual circumstances and instead grant the government minister responsible the power to designate which countries are safe in all circumstances.

This reform is one among many in a recent government effort to appease and appeal to voters who harbour anti-immigrant sentiment. Also in the works are plans to narrow pathways to citizenship and residency, based on the claim that migration has not contributed enough to the economy and should be made to in future by prioritising people with means and skills the country lacks.

The government has been at pains to show that it is taking migration seriously. But in these responses Koketso sees a government trying to mask its own failings, more so with local elections looming in November.

Inequality is extreme, unemployment is high and poverty persists, she says. Pathways to a better life have been few and far between for large sections of the population. As the primary actor responsible for creating these pathways through measures to actualise the socioeconomic rights enshrined in the Constitution, the government has not done enough, she argues.

Koketso points to the strain on government services, which is blamed on migration. The actual causes are government corruption, budget cuts and casual disregard for the poor and working class, she says. Even if all undocumented migrants were to disappear, it would not make these issues go away nor will it address the underlying causes, she adds.

An impending reckoning

In this cascade of threats of violence, deep structural racial inequalities, the pain of dreams deferred and a government seemingly ill-equipped to respond, multiple fault lines have converged, creating opportunities for mass mobilisation. Citizen-first activists have responded to this to offer one political vision for what might come from this moment: a South Africa isolated from the rest of the continent and engaged only to the extent that it is economically beneficial. And they seem prepared and organised enough to see it through.

This vision relies on a false diagnosis, but it derives its power from responding to people’s material realities, says Koketso. She laments that the country’s progressive forces have yet to offer and organise around an equally compelling vision. She suggests that this is the work at hand. More people of good conscience need to not only reject the citizens-first vision but also confront the fault lines and develop an alternative, she says.

With similar contestations taking place elsewhere in the world over citizenship, migration and belonging, the overtly racial nature of events in South Africa appears a bellwether for the Black world. How events there resolve could set a precedent. And only time will tell whether it is worth emulating.