IVOR CHIPKIN | Marchers fear democracy more than migrants

Democracy is rising in South Africa, and authoritarian forces are panicking.

A group calling itself March and March gave “undocumented” migrants until June 30 to leave the country. On the day itself, marches took place across the country, though they were concentrated in Johannesburg and Durban. They were not huge, but they were well organised and succeeded in closing down the economy in many urban areas.

Statistics on the number of foreign migrants in South Africa are contested. The best estimates are that there are more than 4-million, that is, 6% of the population. In many other African countries the proportion is closer to 8%.

The overwhelming majority are from the region, with nearly half coming from Zimbabwe. They have fled the economic collapse of Zanu-PF’s violent dictatorship.

The March and March activists claim they are opposed to illegal and undocumented migration, yet it is impossible to know how many people fall into this category. Gross inefficiency at the home affairs department means that legal migrants often face extended periods of being undocumented. Home affairs data, including permit, visa, asylum and permanent-residence records, are incomplete, poorly digitised and not reconciled against the population count.

At first glance, March and March looks like a South African version of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, promising to clean up the country and put “South Africans first”. It is more like MAGA and US immigration & customs enforcement (ICE) rolled into one. It seeks not only to protest against the presence of migrants but to enforce their departure too. What makes the mood so fearful is that growing evidence links March and March activists either to Jacob Zuma’s MK Party or to the former president himself.

The last time a protest movement associated with Zuma organised on a large scale, the country burnt, literally. In July 2021, 354 people were killed during an insurrection that broke out after police arrested Zuma for contempt of court. Activists (more like a militia) burnt trucks and blocked the main economic corridor between Durban and Johannesburg. They also set fire to shopping centres and encouraged mass looting. There were attacks on especially Indian residential areas in Durban. Businesses were left to fend for themselves. Memory of the failure of the government to protect the public added to fears about June 30. This time the police and the army were on duty.

South Africa’s public domain is being tested by various authoritarian movements seeking to impose on the country their own illiberal definitions of who belongs in South Africa and who does not

Over the past 20 years, the ANC has mutated. In the decade after South Africa became a democracy, the party pursued progressive, broadly social democratic policies while making important headway rebuilding the country as a unitary state. After 2009, when Zuma became president, the party transformed into a Tammany Hall-like machine, gatekeeping jobs in the state and tenders from government departments and state entities. Ambitious individuals seeking upward social mobility joined the party.

The mutation of the ANC into a patronage machine has created a class of affluent insiders whose fortunes are inextricably linked to party control of the state. The party’s electoral decline is more than a political shift, therefore. It is firstly an economic crisis. Second, it is a carceral crisis for many. As the party’s influence over the police and prosecuting authorities declines, so does its ability to gatekeep who suffers consequences for corruption. Some have quit the party altogether, like Zuma, to establish new political parties. The March and March demonstrations are part of an attempt to build a new electoral majority.

The timing is telling. South Africa is a few months away from local government elections. Current polling suggests that the ANC will suffer major losses, especially in Johannesburg and Durban. Herman Mashaba, the leader of ActionSA, has stood with the marchers, likely seeing his association with them as his route to national relevance.

Whoever is behind these marches, a small, well-organised group in South Africa has occupied the public domain and policed its streets of foreigners. Moreover, it has established itself as a national organisation, cowed the political establishment and shown up the forlorn limits of the state.

Currently, the foreigner is an illegal migrant, though the definition bleeds necessarily: foreign elements, foreign cultures, foreign ideas. South Africa’s public domain is being tested by various authoritarian movements seeking to impose on the country their own illiberal definitions of who belongs in South Africa and who does not. The political domain is more and more distinguished by a nationalist camp with authoritarian tendencies and another which is committed to South Africa’s constitutional democracy.

In April this year, the Public Service Amendment Act was passed into law. It better insulates civil servants from inappropriate political interference and begins to close the gate to patrimonial appointments in the state.

The March and March demonstrations are a reaction to the fact that democracy is rising in South Africa.

• Chipkin is director at the New South Institute