The following article was originally published in Casa Marx as part of a dossier on “Africa and Marxism,” prepared by members of Quilombo Vermelho from Brazil and Africa. This article and the aforementioned dossier are part of an initiative launched at the 14th Conference of the Permanent Revolution Current to reclaim the best traditions of revolutionary Marxism and build an internationalist confluence on the African continent in the heat of working-class struggles, which are unified and without borders.
In the last week of May, at Oliver Reginald Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, three hundred Ghanaians, including women and children, were waiting to board a repatriation flight to Accra. They have lived for years in South South Africa, working hard and, in some cases, setting up small informal businesses. Now, they are retracing their steps, fleeing waves of xenophobic violence against fellow Africans.
A few weeks ago, the Nigerian government announced that at least 130 citizens had requested repatriation from South Africa. Behind these repatriations is a new wave of anti-immigration mobilizations, which took place between late April and early May in cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban. The protests were mainly driven by the anti-immigrant movement March and March, with the support of groups like Operation Dudula and factions linked to right-wing parties such as ActionSA and the Patriotic Alliance. The campaign demanded mass deportations and a greater crackdown on immigration, blaming foreigners for unemployment, the strain on public services, and crime.
In early May 2026, Mozambican immigrant workers attempted to block the Ressano Garcia route, the main link between Maputo and the economic hub of Gauteng. This was a protest action against March and March and the episodes of violence in South Africa. Although the blockade did not materialize, it caused long queues, and police forces from both countries were mobilized. For more than a century, Ressano Garcia was the primary gateway for Mozambican workers to South African gold mines. Today, it remains the main entry point for a community of 300,000 citizens living in South Africa. Authorities in Maputo have acknowledged that thousands of Mozambicans have already returned to the country due to the climate of insecurity created by anti-immigration protests and attacks on foreigners.
A similar situation affects workers from Malawi, another country historically integrated into labor migration circuits. More than 200 Malawians have also expressed interest in returning to their country. This concern carries a painful memory: in 2025, the death of the one-year-old son of Grace Manda — a Malawian migrant worker living in Alexandra, Johannesburg — became a tragic symbol of xenophobia. Grace tried to take her son, who was suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, to the hospital, but members of Operation Dudula prevented him from receiving care. Because she was a foreigner, the guards told her she had to go to a private clinic rather than the South African public health system. Other clinics refused to treat her out of fear of violent inspections carried out by the same group, which, in addition to launching attacks on African immigrants, harassed workers to prevent them from providing medical care. Following successive refusals, and unable to afford private services, the child passed away.
Somalis, who form a community of approximately 70,000 people and have been present in the country mostly since the 1990s, have established themselves as small shopkeepers in the townships, becoming regular targets of looting, shop destruction, and violent attacks. Somali community organizations have recorded dozens of murders and hundreds of attacks on traders, often linked to racism and Afrophobia campaigns. In the 2008 attacks, which left 62 people dead, at least three Somalis were among the fatalities, while hundreds of businesses belonging to the community were looted or destroyed.
Among the different groups affected by the current wave of xenophobia, Zimbabweans occupy a prominent place. Unlike other smaller and more recently arrived communities, Zimbabwean migration is an intrinsic part of the South African social and demographic landscape. Thousands of workers have crossed the border in search of employment. In April, the Zimbabwean consulate in Cape Town was called upon to provide assistance to 67 Zimbabwean citizens and 21 children evicted from their homes in the East London region of the Eastern Cape following actions tied to anti-immigrant vigilante groups. For their part, shopkeepers denounce the forced closure of their businesses. The 2008 attacks, the waves of violence in 2015 and 2019, as well as recent attacks by Operation Dudula and the rhetoric of March and March, particularly target migrants from Zimbabwe with their hatred.
At its core, the current xenophobic wave in South Africa is not the result of supposed cultural traits of the South African population, let alone a spontaneous reaction. On the one hand, it is the product of the deep economic and social crisis gripping Southern Africa. On the other, it stems from the constant manipulation by sectors of the state, political parties, and conservative leaders.
Currently, the African National Congress governs in coalition with right-wing parties like the Democratic Alliance and the Patriotic Alliance, while different political actors compete for popular support by blaming African migrants for the country’s problems. Therefore, what we are seeing is a form of Afrophobia unfolding within a critical social context that has long forced workers to bear the brunt of the economic crisis. According to Human Rights Watch, over 43% of South Africa’s economically active population is unemployed or has stopped looking for work, fueling narratives that associate foreigners with deteriorating living conditions or the strain on schools and hospitals. However, migrants represent only 4% of the country’s population. But groups like Operation Dudula and March and March, accompanied by politicians from various parties, insist on framing them as responsible for the pressure on the labor market and public services.
During much of the 20th century, millions of Africans across the continent actively stood in solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle, conceiving the liberation of South Africa as part of a continental liberation project. Decades later, following the unfulfilled promises of the African National Congress’s class-compromise project, Afrophobia is an alarming symptom of capitalism’s inability to satisfy basic democratic and national liberation demands.
Operation Dudula: The Far-Right Expression of Institutionalized Afrophobia
Launched in Soweto in 2021, Operation Dudula emerged as a “community” vigilante campaign aimed at expelling immigrants from working-class neighborhoods using paramilitary methods — including attacks on commercial establishments and brutal harassment at schools and hospitals to block access for immigrants. Its name in Zulu means “to push out” or “to expel.” From its origins, the movement has been associated with acts of intimidation, neighborhood patrols, demanding documentation, raiding small businesses, and expelling African immigrants. Over time, the organization has expanded to several provinces across the country and now even manages to contest elections.
In 2023, the organization officially registered with the Independent Electoral Commission as a political party, proceeding to run in municipal and national elections. Legalization did not mean abandoning its vigilante agenda. In fact, the movement began using elections and state institutions as legal cover for its criminal actions. At the same time, they are drawing up a program of mass deportation and criminalization. We are witnessing the institutionalization of the Far-Right and its methods, which are now part of the daily life of the South African Parliament, Executive, and Judiciary.
However, Operation Dudula’s election results are telling. Despite the visibility gained through media coverage and a social media presence largely funded by the global Far-Right, the party secured negligible results in the 2024 national elections. In Gauteng, the province where the movement emerged and centers its operations, it yielded only 2,663 votes, which corresponds to 0.07% of the total. In KwaZulu-Natal, the party obtained 736 votes, representing 0.05% of the total. In the Western Cape, the party did not exceed 0.02%.
This electoral failure indicates that Operation Dudula does not yet constitute a mass movement or enjoy genuine popular legitimacy. Its significance derives instead from the growing institutionalization of xenophobia, which allows elements of its platform to be absorbed by larger parties, state authorities, and new anti-immigration movements like March and March and South African First.
Political Parties and the Institutionalization of Afrophobia
Currently, the African National Congress (ANC) governs through a coalition known as the “Government of National Unity” (GNU), which brings together parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Inkatha Freedom Party, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), among other smaller political formations. The formation of this coalition marked a rightward shift for the political regime.
Although the ANC lost its absolute parliamentary majority in the 2024 elections, a significant portion of the electorate voted for political platforms that, at least rhetorically, presented themselves as alternatives to dominant neoliberal policies — such as the ANC itself, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK). The solution found by the South African bourgeoisie and imperialist pressure, through their political allies, was the creation of a broad coalition aimed at preserving the neoliberal order in the country.
In this sense, the GNU reveals Bonapartist tendencies by attempting to arbitrate the crisis of representation, preserving the pillars of the post-apartheid order — which betrayed popular aspirations — and limiting the political expression of the deep social discontent accumulated over recent decades. To make matters worse, it has accommodated traditional parties of the South African Right, such as the DA, and right-wing populism, such as the PA. At the same time, the shift of the political center toward more conservative positions opens the door to the legitimization of anti-immigration rhetoric and the growing influence of far-right organizations and leaders.
The result is a process of institutionalizing Afrophobia, in which politicians normalize the anti-migration agenda by occupying key positions in the state and parliament. Among the most explicit cases is the Patriotic Alliance, a party led by Gayton McKenzie, a former bank robber convicted in his youth who rose economically by delivering motivational speeches and mobilizing a Black working-class base. He forced his way into politics through a nationalist, punitive discourse heavily inspired by the international Far-Right. The PA became famous for slogans like abahambe (“they must leave”), frequently used in demonstrations against African immigrants. During the pandemic, McKenzie argued that, given the shortage of oxygen in hospitals, it was vital to block access for foreign patients. In the following years, party leaders and militants participated in joint actions with Operation Dudula. Currently, as a member of the Government of National Unity, the party controls ministries and local administrations.
Similar stances can be found in ActionSA, founded by Herman Mashaba after his departure from the Democratic Alliance. Since its inception, the migration issue has become one of the party’s primary axes of action. Mashaba has built his national profile through campaigns against undocumented immigrants in Johannesburg, defending police raids in immigrant communities.
More recently, the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party, founded by former President Jacob Zuma after his break with the ANC, has also begun incorporating elements of this discourse. Although the party combines criticisms of the Government of National Unity and the country’s socio-economic decline with references to the legacy of the liberation struggle, part of its rhetoric has resorted to themes associated with conservative nationalism, alongside a traditional promotion of Zulu ethnic and regional identity in KwaZulu-Natal.
This strategy falls within an older political tradition in the province, marked by the historical influence of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), an organization that, since the final years of apartheid, mobilized elements of Zulu identity as a political tool against the ANC. In this context, MK leaders have advocated for more restrictive migration policies and resorted to arguments linking the presence of foreigners to competition for jobs.
The problem does not lie in the affirmation of Zulu identity, which has a long history marked by resistance to colonialism. The issue is that conservative manipulations of this identity exist, reinforcing exclusive conceptions of national belonging. This amplifies the impact of rhetoric that frames African migrants as “outsiders.” In a context of sharp political polarization and a crisis of representation, the migration issue has become an electoral mobilization tool for various opposition sectors, including MK.
Although a minority voice in contemporary South Africa, Afrikaner nationalism still finds spaces for institutional expression. Organizations like AfriForum and the Orania community advocate for various forms of self-determination for the Afrikaner population and preserve social structures organized around linguistic and cultural criteria. These sectors keep alive a political tradition based on ethnic separation and the defense of distinct rights for specific groups of the white Afrikaner population.
In recent years, this discourse has crossed the borders of South Africa, finding an echo in the American Far-Right. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been spreading claims about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa for years. In 2025, Trump went so far as to grant refugee status to groups of Afrikaners claiming racial persecution, while drastically tightening immigration policies for refugees from other regions of the world. This episode highlights the connection between an enduring image of Afrikaner nationalism and the political repertoire of the Far-Right, which seeks to turn a privileged minority in South Africa into a symbol of global right-wing campaigns against racial redress policies.
Taken together, these various phenomena reveal that the Afrophobia terrorizing African immigrants is not a spontaneous reaction from the working classes. It is produced and legitimized by the South African political regime itself, taking various forms ranging from the vigilantism of Operation Dudula to the rhetoric of institutionalized parties and the policies championed by members of the government itself.
Not even parties that have historically sought to present themselves as defenders of Pan-Africanism have remained immune to this pressure. Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), though maintaining a stance against xenophobia and frequently denouncing attacks on migrants, have at times adopted ambiguous formulations in the face of rising anti-immigrant sentiment among certain working-class sectors, backing slogans like “put South Africans first for jobs.”
However, the most significant shift is occurring within the ANC itself, which heads the GNU. Heir to a political tradition that championed international African solidarity during the struggle against apartheid and colonialism, the party has also gradually incorporated elements of the anti-immigration agenda. In recent years, several government leaders have defended operations against undocumented foreigners and the tightening of migration policies. Aaron Motsoaledi, as Minister of Health in 2018, claimed that foreigners were a burden on South African hospitals and advocated for a review of immigration laws. Ironically, years later, the government itself was forced to admit it lacked data proving the number of foreigners using public health services.
In the current government, figures associated with anti-immigration rhetoric have moved into key positions. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, of the Democratic Alliance (DA), has become one of the primary proponents of tightening migration policy, promoting campaigns against undocumented immigrants and the implementation of biometric technologies for population control. Meanwhile, Gayton McKenzie is Minister of Sports, Arts, and Culture, maintaining his reactionary anti-immigration rhetoric.
It is no coincidence that Operation Dudula and other vigilante movements frequently justify their actions by claiming they are merely fulfilling objectives already present in official state discourse. Indeed, there is now a broad political consensus around the idea that immigration constitutes one of the primary problems facing the country. Although parties disagree on the intensity of the proposed measures, scapegoating foreigners for structural problems has become a recurring element of public debate in South Africa. In this sense, contemporary Afrophobia is not merely the product of social prejudice or extremist groups alone, but the result of its growing legitimization within the country’s own political institutions.
What Lies Behind the “Bad Governance” Rhetoric: South African Hegemony in Southern Africa and the Responsibility of the South African Bourgeoisie
In a virulent speech delivered during one of the recent March and March demonstrations, a speaker was heard asserting that “South Africa cannot sustain all African countries and peoples” and that “it was exclusively South Africans who fought against apartheid.” This statement encapsulates one of the primary mystifications present in contemporary Afrophobic discourse. It not only erases the role played by anti-colonial movements and neighboring countries in undermining the apartheid regime, but it also ignores the fact that South Africa was, for decades, the main regional power responsible for sustaining a deeply unequal economic order in Southern Africa.
The apartheid regime did not exist in isolation. In addition to promoting destabilization wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique, it systematically profited from the exploitation of migrant labor and asymmetric economic relations that subordinated neighboring economies to the needs of South African capital. The post-apartheid order led by Nelson Mandela’s ANC broke with formal racial segregation but largely preserved the regional economic structures inherited from that period.
Another manifestation of this same mystification appears in the persistent narrative of “bad governance.” According to this explanation, migratory flows are the consequence of corruption, authoritarianism, or incompetence by neighboring governments. Obviously, African national governments bear responsibility for submitting to imperialism and running autocratic, repressive regimes allied with neoliberal extractivism and mired in corruption. Even the parties that assumed power following the liberation struggles quickly led their countries into a highly dependent integration within the neoliberal economy, betraying the expectations of the liberation processes. However, when promoted by South African politicians and ideologues, this narrative serves an important ideological function: to conceal the historical role of the South African bourgeoisie itself in structuring a deeply unequal regional economy, and its own active role in so-called “bad governance.”
Contemporary migration is not only a consequence of crises in countries of origin but also of the dominant position held by the South African bourgeoisie in the capitalist development of Southern Africa, even though it is itself subordinated to imperialism and the IMF. For over a century, South African capitalism benefited from the systematic exploitation of natural resources, infrastructure, and labor from neighboring countries. The growth of the mining, industry, and services in the country was intimately linked to the incorporation of migrant workers recruited from Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi, Eswatini, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Far from being an external or accidental presence, these workers were a necessary condition for the very capital accumulation that transformed South Africa into the region’s economic powerhouse.
The current criminalization of migrants therefore contains a profound historical inversion. Those who for decades migrated due to the needs of South African capital are now presented as a threat. To understand this contradiction, it is necessary to examine the legacy of the migrant labor system and the ways in which South African economic hegemony continued to shape the unequal development of Southern Africa even after the end of apartheid.
The case of the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric plant helps illustrate how these relations of dependency survived both colonialism and apartheid. In Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman demonstrate that the megaproject was conceived by the Portuguese colonial regime as part of an economic architecture designed to supply cheap energy to white-minority regimes in South Africa and then-Rhodesia. Cahora Bassa was tailored to meet the needs of mining and industrial capital in Southern Africa, thereby consolidating South Africa’s dominant position in the region.
The independence of Mozambique and the rise of FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) did not substantially break that logic. Despite socialist rhetoric and criticisms of the colonial legacy, the new state maintained electricity exports to South Africa as a primary source of foreign exchange revenue. To make matters worse, for more than thirty years after 1975, Portugal retained majority shareholder control of the Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Plant. The result was the preservation of a structure inherited from the colonial period, in which the country’s primary energy wealth remained integrated into the needs of the South African economy.
Decades after the end of apartheid, this regional architecture remains largely intact. South Africa continues to be one of the main destinations for electricity generated at Cahora Bassa, highlighting how the post-apartheid order has preserved deeply unequal mechanisms of economic integration between the regional power and its poorer neighbors.
This perception was explicitly demonstrated during the protests along the Ressano Garcia border. In a report by DW Português, a Mozambican woman argued that her country should cut off the electricity supply to South Africa in response to the assaults on migrants. In contrast to the narrative framing Mozambique as merely a poor country dependent on South Africa, she spontaneously pointed out that a significant portion of the energy consumed by the South African economy is still produced on Mozambican territory. Ironically, South African capitalism is nowhere near solving its own energy contradictions either. South Africa continues to grapple with recurring power supply crises and rolling blackouts (load-shedding), which, as always, fall squarely on South African workers.
Another contradiction within the “bad governance” narrative lies in the ANC’s own international policy. The countries most frequently singled out as sources of migratory flows to South Africa have been governed for decades by parties that maintain close historical ties with the ANC itself. This is the case with FRELIMO in Mozambique, the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) in Angola, and ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) in Zimbabwe. All share a common origin in anti-colonial struggles and national liberation movements, and they also share responsibility for Southern Africa’s general shift toward neoliberalism.
South Africa’s hierarchical position in the regional economy goes even further. Since the end of apartheid, South African-based financial groups, telecommunications companies, retail chains, and media conglomerates have expanded across Southern Africa and into other regions of the continent. Banks like Standard Bank have become major financial players in dozens of African markets. Companies like MTN control strategic networks across several nations. Groups like Shoprite and MultiChoice have consolidated dominant positions in their respective consumer sectors. These corporations are deeply integrated into international capital and feature internationalized shareholder structures; nevertheless, their expansion has helped reinforce South Africa’s role as the primary financial hub of the region.
This does not mean South Africa has overcome its own condition of dependency on global capitalism. The South African economy remains subordinated to imperialism and currently stumbles along under a double dependency on both the United States and China. It remains a structurally semi-colonial country, with a dependent national bourgeoisie subordinated to imperialism. However, imperialist exploitation in Africa relies on maintaining a chain of underdevelopment in which South Africa, its bourgeoisie, and its political regime play a fundamental role, occupying a hierarchically superior position relative to its neighbors.
It is precisely this contradiction that the “bad governance” narrative seeks to hide. By presenting migration as a simple consequence of political failures in countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, or Malawi, it obscures the agency of the South African bourgeoisie itself.
Conclusion
The xenophobic wave of Afrophobia across South Africa is not a spontaneous reaction from the working classes. It is the result of deeper contradictions within the post-apartheid order and, currently, of a degraded political regime that paves the way for the institutionalization of these conservative phenomena. While regional economic integration continues to reproduce historical forms of dependency and segregation, the crisis of South African capitalism is now managed by framing African immigrants as enemies responsible for the ills caused by South African racial capitalism.
Grounded in this understanding, we stand in solidarity with the struggle of African immigrants against xenophobia and advocate for full civil, political, and labor rights for all working men and women on the continent, regardless of nationality. As stated by the 14th Conference of the Current for Permanent Revolution (CPR-FI), the fight against xenophobia anywhere in the world is an integral part of an anti-imperialist and internationalist profile.
In the case of South Africa, the fight against Afrophobia cannot be separated from the struggle against imperialism, against the economic plunder of the continent, and against the governments and ruling classes of each country. In the face of attempts to divide South African, Mozambican, Zimbabwean, Malawian, Congolese, and other workers of so many different nationalities, the only alternative lies in rebuilding an internationalist perspective capable of confronting imperialism and the national bourgeoisies that sustain it.
Originally written in Portuguese atCasa Marxon May 30, 2026. English translation by Delfina Pelater.
