Let me begin with a disclaimer: I am a Zimbabwean who lived and worked in South Africa for 10 years. My struggle as an immigrant, first on an asylum seeker permit and then on the precarious Zimbabwe Exemption Permit, saw me work in all sorts of jobs ranging from scrubbing the floors in a chicken factory in Olifantsfontein to teaching at institutions of higher education. In all these circumstances, I worked alongside ordinary South Africans who have increasingly become frustrated by rising unemployment, migration, deepening inequality and mounting socio-economic pressures despite the constitutional dictum that says, “South Africa belongs to all who live in it.” While their frustrations are real, directing anger towards African migrants turns them into convenient scapegoats for structural failures they neither created nor control.
The recent anti-immigrant sentiments under the banner of #Abahambe (‘they must go” or “they must leave”), inspired by the vigilante group March and March, is not a new phenomenon in South Africa’s post-apartheid history. However, what is unfolding today carries a chilling organisation and legitimacy that distinguishes it from sporadic violence of the past.
This is no longer spontaneous anger aimed at “illegal foreigners” but mobilisation of masses armed with demeaning slogans and social media campaigns. It reflects a dangerous precedent of political exclusion that determines who belongs and who is an outsider based on nationality, language and skin colour. In doing so, the March and March movement produces the very logic upon which apartheid was premised: the creation of hierarchies of belonging, the policing of identity, and the systematic dehumanisation of those deemed outsiders.
In this turbid environment, many have watched with unease as ordinary economic grievances have been reshaped into a narrative of national purification. Into this crucible, fellow black immigrants have been cast as a source of chronic unemployment, crime, drug abuse and failing public services.
The irony is difficult to ignore.
South Africa was built on the foundation that dehumanised people based on origin and skin colour and is now constructing new hierarchies of belonging policed in full view of the state by vigilante groups operating with disconcerting impunity. It is against this backdrop that the emergence of the March and March vigilante group after Operation Dudula must be understood as anchored in the historical legacies of apartheid. I conduct my analysis using the following three hypotheses on xenophobia as put forward by Bronwyn Harris, and explained based on my lived experience.
The Scapegoating hypothesis
In general, immigrant groups are considered assimilable when in small numbers. Hostility towards African foreigners in South Africa can be explained in terms of limited resources. The recurring grievance is that immigrants are crowding out jobs, housing, and healthcare services at the expense of South Africans. To that end, township poverty and general economic pressures are attributed to the unwelcome foreigner.
Such scapegoating of the African migrant in South Africa, as I have argued before, is not supported by scientific data. Pitting migrants against locals does not address the high youth unemployment rate currently standing at 60.9 %. In 2019, the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) attributed high unemployment rates to South Africa’s dysfunctional public schools. It argued that 78% of grade four children cannot read for meaning in any language and 61% of fifth graders cannot do basic maths.
Most recently, a report by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) has further established that unemployment in South Africa cannot be attributed to an influx of immigrants. In the first quarter of 2026, unemployment stood at 43.6%, representing over 8.1 million people without jobs. According to the Wits report, at this rate, even if every foreign national were to be removed from South Africa, the unemployment rate would fall only by six percentage points, from 43.6% to 37.6%. Therefore, xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals cannot be entirely anchored on scapegoating them for the socio-economic pressures. The problem then and now is that jobs simply do not exist in an economy anchored in austerity budgets.
The isolation hypothesis
The isolation hypothesis perhaps explains xenophobic attacks as a by-product of the apartheid era. The exclusion of South Africans emphasised boundary maintenance and tribal trust lands. In the scheme of apartheid, South Africans were taught to be wary of strangers amongst them. This has affected South Africans’ ability to be tolerant of “outsiders.”
During my years in South Africa (Thembisa, Ladybrand and KuGompo City), asking for directions in English during anti-immigrant protests was a risky undertaking. This would immediately give me away as a foreigner and was always followed up with the question “uphuma phi?” (“Where do you come from?”). In such circumstances, identity ceases to be celebrated and becomes something negotiated for safety.
Unfortunately, this has also led to many South Africans being mistaken as foreigners. The Tsonga people (an ethnic minority in South Africa) are now reported to be living in fear when they are in the KwaZulu-Natal province or the Western Cape province. By extension, this has also brought to life the question as to why such white supremacist enclaves like Orania and Kleinfontein exist years after the demise of segregationist policies. In post-apartheid South Africa, segregation is still anchored on origin and skin colour!
The bio-cultural hypothesis
According to Harris, the bio-cultural hypothesis explains xenophobia in terms of perceived biological traits and cultural differences. These differences are used to distinguish African foreigners from native South Africans, and therein lies the problem: Nationality is often associated with accents, dress, physical appearances, or subtle cultural practices.
These informal markers are then used by ordinary citizens to assume the role of immigration officials. A recent court judgment ruled that only an immigration officer or a police officer has the authority to demand that another private person produce identification documents to demonstrate their right of stay in the Republic of South Africa.
Zimbabweans, for example, are often identified by their pronunciation of certain English words, their Shona or Ndebele accents, or even by the way they speak isiZulu. Basotho migrants are easily recognised by the distinctive blanket wrapped around the shoulders, often accompanied by gumboots even in the sultry heat. Mozambicans have historically been identified by vaccination marks on the left forearm, while Malawians have sometimes been stereotyped through their language, dress and occupational patterns. These markers are neither scientific nor reliable, yet they have become instruments through which suspicion is normalised.
What makes this particularly disturbing is that these methods mirror apartheid’s obsession with classification. The tragedy is that many South Africans who themselves suffered under racial profiling now unconsciously reproduce similar mechanisms against fellow Africans. The target has changed, but the underlying logic remains remarkably familiar.
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A way forward: beyond scapegoats and slogans
Understanding the March and March movement, and Afrophobia more broadly, requires more than condemnation. It requires a deliberate, multi-pronged response that addresses both the material conditions fuelling resentment and the historical psychology sustaining it. I offer five proposals as a starting point.
- Dismantle the scapegoat narrative at its roots: South Africa requires an honest, data-led public information campaign to counter scapegoating. Such information must be placed in the hands of ordinary South Africans, and not buried in inaccessible academic reports and libraries. Government, civil society and the media share responsibility for ensuring that economic grievances are directed at their actual causes: austerity budgets, failing education systems and stagnant investment, rather than at convenient scapegoats.
- Establish integration programmes in townships and informal settlements: Isolation hypothesis dynamics are acute in townships and informal settlements. These flare points require rigorous integration programmes that also teach the locals that foreign nationals can also create jobs. Failure to integrate communities will create artificial boundaries of origin that will harden into xenophobic violence. South Africans and foreign nationals in these volatile spaces should be brought around shared economic interests, skills and community projects governed by municipal laws.
- Strengthen law enforcement accountability: Vigilante groups should operate within the law, and the police should lead by enforcing it. Legal experts argue that even in light of polarized debate on migration, South Africa is bound by international treaties. They implore the South African government to safeguard individuals, particularly refugees and asylum seekers, from harm. Vigilante groups forcing people to return to dangerous frontiers and countries where they are likely to face persecution amounts to the violation of the principle of non-refoulement.
- Reframe South Africa’s regional economic strategy: South Africa is the main beneficiary of trade and investment flows across the African continent. As a result, it stands to lose more from an image of hostility toward African migrants. Instead, South Africa should champion, not only African unity, but also a regional labour mobility framework that eases access to the Southern African Development Community (SADC). For example, a regional work permit may reduce undocumented migration and improve tax compliance and labour inspections.
- Confront apartheid psychology: South Africa must invest in a national reckoning with the isolation hypothesis itself. This means confronting how apartheid’s boundary-making psychology still shapes perceptions of belonging, not only toward foreigners but among South Africans of different ethnic and provincial backgrounds. Truth-telling initiatives, oral history projects and school curricula that explicitly link xenophobia to apartheid’s unfinished business could begin to loosen the grip of a mindset that continues to police who belongs and who does not.
These suggested solutions are not a quick fix. But without confronting vigilantism that foments and sustains Afrophobia, South Africa risks becoming a society that has dismantled apartheid’s laws while preserving its logic, one march at a time.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com
