MANDLA RADEBE | #Mabahambe cannot resolve South Africa’s national question

The recent anti-migrant mobilisation under the slogan #Mabahambe has generated fear, displacement and violence against African migrants, while exposing deep frustrations among many South Africans about unemployment, crime, failing public services and weak border management.

Thousands of migrants reportedly fled communities ahead of the marches, while businesses closed and security forces were deployed amid fears of widespread violence.

While it would be a mistake to dismiss the protests simply as irrational xenophobia, it would be equally dangerous to accept the claim that migrants are the principal cause of South Africa’s economic and social crisis.

The current anti-migrant sentiment is best understood as a contemporary expression of an unresolved national question about who belongs to the nation and how political citizenship is realised through access to economic resources and material development. It has always been about more than political sovereignty.

During colonialism and apartheid it centred on racial domination, land dispossession and the exclusion of the African majority from citizenship, economic participation and political power. The 1994 democratic breakthrough resolved formal political exclusion by extending citizenship and constitutional rights to all, but political democracy did not fundamentally transform the material conditions inherited from colonialism and apartheid.

Three decades later, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world. Unemployment, especially among young people, remains devastatingly high. Public services are under severe strain. Economic growth has stagnated. Corruption and state failure have eroded public confidence. The majority who fought for democracy continue to experience poverty, insecure livelihoods and limited economic opportunity.

It is within this material context that slogans such as #Mabahambe acquire political traction.

The current discourse frequently portrays undocumented migrants as responsible for many of our social ills, yet available evidence presents a far more complex picture. Many analysts instead point to chronic inequality, weak governance, corruption and decades of underinvestment in public service as the primary drivers of our socioeconomic crises.

This does not mean immigration should be ignored. Every sovereign state has both the right and the obligation to regulate its borders. Effective immigration policy, proper documentation systems and secure border management are legitimate functions of the democratic state. Failure to manage migration effectively undermines public confidence and creates opportunities for criminal syndicates to exploit migrants and citizens alike.

However, acknowledging the need for orderly migration is fundamentally different from constructing migrants as the principal explanation for South Africa’s socioeconomic crisis.

Our recent study on the 2021 and 2024 local government and national elections reveals that immigration has become the dominant terrain through which competing visions of South African nationhood are articulated. Questions of citizenship, border control and belonging increasingly displaced race as the principal language through which political actors explained unemployment, insecurity and state failure.

Rather than a single understanding of nationhood, what is emerging are four competing understandings of the South African nation: constitutional nationalism, civic constitutionalism, Pan-Africanism and a growing restrictionist nationalism. These reflect competing understandings of citizenship, belonging, territorial sovereignty and national identity.

Immigration has become the language through which deeper anxieties about economic justice are now expressed. That should concern us because history teaches us that societies experiencing severe inequality often seek visible explanations for invisible structural problems.

Migrants are visible. Capital flight is not. Informal traders are visible. State capture is less so. Street vendors are visible. The long-term consequences of deindustrialisation, financialisation and stagnant investment are far less visible. It is therefore politically easier to identify migrants than to confront the structural organisation of the economy.

South Africans have every right to demand jobs, functioning municipalities, secure borders, efficient immigration systems an accountable government. These are democratic demands that deserve serious political attention.

The question is whether expelling migrants addresses the underlying causes of these problems.

If corruption remains unchecked, if municipalities continue to collapse, if economic growth remains stagnant, if youth unemployment continues to exceed 40%, and if inequality remains among the highest globally, removing migrants will not resolve the structural crisis. The material foundations that generate public frustration will remain intact.

That is why the current anti-migrant mobilisation should not be understood simply as a debate about immigration. It is fundamentally a debate about the unfinished project of South Africa’s democratic transition.

The country therefore faces a historic choice. We can continue searching for ever-changing scapegoats, or we can confront the deeper political economy that continues to deny millions the full fruits of democracy.

The answer to #Mabahambe ultimately lies not in deciding who must leave, but in finally addressing why, 30 years into democracy, so many South Africans still feel that they have not arrived.

• Radebe is a professor in the department of strategic communication at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Apartheid did not die: South Africa’s unfinished revolution (Inkani Books). He writes in his personal capacity.