Since 2010 when I first visited South Africa and had a conference at the University of South Africa, School of Bussiness in Midland, I have returned to the country several times and had engagements with different institutions in Durban, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, East London, Polokwane, etc.
I admire the good infrastructure the country has, and the growing economy. The standards in educational facilities, and the quest for service delivery. I admire the efforts to hold government accountable both by the citizens and parliament and other anti-graft institutions.
However, I have also wondered about the sharp contrast between affluence in cities alongside squalor in townships.
I have often reflected on the promise that accompanied the end of apartheid, not just political liberation, but economic freedom. It was a promise spoken in the language of dignity: that the fall of oppression would usher in opportunity, that exclusion would give way to inclusion, that the children of the townships would inherit not only the vote, but a viable stake in the economy.
I have been sceptical about the realisation and sustainability of this promise. For many young South Africans today, that promise feels deferred, if not denied. And it is in that widening gap between expectation and reality that the anger on the streets finds its fuel.
The fires that lick the edges of Johannesburg’s townships and the streets of Tshwane are not just consuming shops, they are consuming a moral promise. A promise once made not only to South Africans, but to the entire continent: that the end of apartheid would mark the beginning of a shared African dignity, not a hierarchy of belonging.
At a moment when many chose silence or convenience, Julius Malema chose clarity. He refused to harvest votes from hatred. He asked a question as simple as it was devastating: has burning foreign-owned businesses created a single job?
He reminded a wounded nation that no pregnant woman should be turned away from a clinic because of her passport. And he named, without flinching, the deeper betrayal, that it was not migrants who looted the state, but leaders who traded clinics for corruption, schools for tenders, and hope for excess.
Yet the anger on the streets has found a powerful voice. One particularly furious South African youth, now viral, stood before national television cameras during clashes in Johannesburg involving Operation Dudula and anti-xenophobia demonstrators, demanding the deportation of migrants.
His message was raw, unfiltered, and resonant with many: that South Africans are struggling while “foreigners” are being maintained by taxpayers.
This sentiment cannot be dismissed lightly. It reflects a deeper anxiety about scarcity, about who belongs, who benefits, and who is left behind. It speaks to communities where public services are overstretched, where jobs are painfully scarce, and where the presence of outsiders, however small, feels like an added burden. In such an environment, perception can easily harden into conviction.
But perception here is not reality.
Migrants make up roughly 6.5 percent of South Africa’s population, yet contribute close to 9 percent of its GDP, according to the Institute for Security Studies. This is not the profile of a group being “maintained” by the state; it is the profile of a community actively participating in, and in many cases sustaining, economic activity, particularly in the informal sector where the state itself has often failed to provide support.
South Africa’s migrant population is neither monolithic nor marginal. It is one of the most diverse on the African continent, shaped largely by intra-African movement driven by economic opportunity, regional instability, and long-standing labour and trade networks.
To understand the tensions that periodically erupt, one must first understand who these migrants are, and what roles they play within South Africa’s economy and society.
The largest group comes from Zimbabwe. For decades, economic decline and political instability have pushed many Zimbabweans southward in search of survival and opportunity.
They are deeply woven into the fabric of South Africa’s labour market, working across construction, agriculture, domestic service, and the informal economy. Contrary to popular stereotypes, many are also educated and skilled, occupying roles that reflect both necessity and adaptability.
From Mozambique and Malawi come migrants whose presence dates back to the apartheid era, when cross-border labour migration fed South Africa’s mining industry. Today, they remain active in low-wage sectors such as farming, mining, and domestic work, continuing a historical pattern of economic integration that predates democracy itself.
In the townships and informal settlements, migrants from the Horn of Africa, particularly Somalia and Ethiopia, have become prominent in small-scale retail. Their spaza shops, often run through tight-knit networks and collective supply chains, have made them both economically visible and, at times, targets of resentment.
Their success in these precarious markets is frequently misunderstood as displacement, rather than as a response to gaps left by formal systems.
Migrants from Nigeria occupy a more varied space, particularly in urban centres like Johannesburg and Pretoria. They are involved in business, entertainment, education, and services, contributing to the cultural and economic dynamism of the cities they inhabit.
Yet they are also among the most stereotyped, often unfairly associated with criminality in public discourse, which further complicates their place in South Africa’s social landscape.
From Democratic Republic of the Congo come many refugees and asylum seekers, driven not by economic ambition alone but by conflict and displacement. They bring with them resilience and enterprise, establishing small businesses and contributing to sectors such as the arts and services, even as they navigate the vulnerabilities of uncertain legal status.
Smaller but still significant communities arrive from neighbouring countries such as Lesotho and Eswatini, as well as from parts of Asia, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. Many of these migrants are also engaged in small-scale retail and informal trade, quietly sustaining livelihoods in highly competitive environments.
Taken together, these groups reveal a simple but often overlooked truth: migrants in South Africa are overwhelmingly African, economically active, and concentrated in sectors where survival depends on initiative rather than state support.
They are not a uniform bloc, nor are they passive beneficiaries of public resources. They are participants in an economy that is itself under strain, sometimes competing, sometimes collaborating, but always navigating the same structural challenges that confront millions of South Africans.
To reduce this complex reality to a narrative of blame is to misunderstand both migration and the deeper forces shaping South Africa’s socio-economic landscape.
This does not erase the frustrations of South Africans. It does not magically create jobs or ease the pressure on clinics, housing, and infrastructure. But it does challenge a dangerous simplification, that migrants are the cause of these hardships. They are not. They are, more often, navigating the same broken system, finding ways to survive where many others have been failed.
To tell this story honestly, for those of us who have encountered South Africa, we must listen, carefully and without condescension, to the young men and women marching in anger.
They are not marching in a vacuum. They are marching from homes where opportunity is scarce, from communities where economic mobility feels out of reach, from a daily reality of exclusion and frustration. They see competition where there should be collaboration. They see survival where there should be shared growth.
Their anger is real, based on the promise of a prosperous post-apartheid South Africa. But it is being misdirected.
Because the truth South Africa must confront is this: the violence we are witnessing is not merely “Black-on-Black.” It is the eruption of economic despair redirected at the most visible, and most vulnerable, targets. Foreign nationals did not hollow out public institutions.
They did not design inequality. They did not preside over an unemployment crisis that has become a generational sentence. Yet they are the ones whose shops burn, whose livelihoods vanish, whose presence becomes a convenient explanation for systemic failure.
There is a bitter irony that should give the nation pause. Across the decades of apartheid, African countries stood shoulder to shoulder with South Africa. They gave sanctuary, resources, and solidarity. The struggle against apartheid was never South Africa’s alone, it was Africa’s. Today, that shared history is being set alight in the very communities that once symbolized resistance and hope.
Anger, no matter how justified, must still find the right target. When it does not, it becomes self-destructive. When South Africans turn their frustration toward fellow Africans, they are not dismantling injustice, they are deepening it.
They are weakening the very foundation upon which any meaningful recovery must be built.
The responsibility, then, lies squarely with the state.
The South African government must do more than condemn violence after the fact. It must act, decisively and visibly. It must restore trust by confronting corruption, improving service delivery, and creating real economic opportunities. It must manage the informal economy so that competition does not become conflict. And it must enforce the rule of law without hesitation.
But South Africa cannot carry this burden alone. The African Union must speak with clarity and conviction. African lives cannot become conditional within Africa itself. The promise of integration under the African Continental Free Trade Area is meaningless if Africans are unsafe in African communities.
Africa Agenda 2063 promises a united, prosperous pan-Africa. The Africa we want. Not a fractured Africa consumed by insidious hate for other nationals.
South Africa stands at a crossroads. It can allow anger to define its direction, or it can confront the deeper failures that fuel that anger while preserving the dignity of all who live within its borders.
Because in the end, the greatest danger is not the anger in the streets, it is anger aimed at the wrong enemy.
● Prof Ukertor Gabriel Moti. Professor of Public Sector Management and Governance.
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