Anti-immigrant anger, usually considered as a European and American story, has erupted in Africa’s wealthiest nation. In Durban, South Africa, thousands of African migrants are huddled in improvised street camps—plastic sacks and tarps, babies under blankets—after anti-immigration activists ordered all undocumented foreigners out of the country “or face untold consequences,” the New York Times reported June 26. Mobs have attacked immigrant homes, shops, and salons; even legally recognized refugees say they have been beaten and told to leave.
The scale is striking. At one Durban fairground, the government counted at least 8,000 people awaiting repatriation, with some 7,000 Malawians already bused home. Charles Paul, a 24-year-old carpenter, left after seven years, reaching through a fence to touch his two-month-old son a last time before boarding a bus to Malawi; the boy and his South African mother stay behind. Valerie Ngabo, who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008 and started a hair salon, was beaten, and is now weighing a return to her war-torn village—approved for U.S. resettlement in 2024, she has been stranded since President Trump froze the refugee program.
This deserves attention, precisely because it scrambles the usual frame. According to typical classifications, there is no race angle here: it is black South Africans leading these anti-immigrant actions. The grievances South Africa’s government and activists invoke are economic to the core: an unemployment rate near a third of the workforce, strained public services, and the habit of blaming the foreigner for joblessness and crime. Race and nationality may be visible expressions of resentment, but they do not fully explain its source.
