Xenophobia In South Africa: State’s Complicity With Gangs And Vigilantes Is Threatening Its Ability To Govern

An anti-immigrant march in South Africa, June 2026. Screengrab/YouTube/Al Jazeera English

BY LOREN B. LANDAU AND JEAN PIERRE MISAGO

Marches, Mozambicans murdered, state-sponsored evacuations, a nationally televised presidential address. Anti-immigrant mobilisation has again drawn the world’s attention to South Africa. The continental backlash threatens tourism, trade, diplomacy and investment opportunities in Africa’s largest economy, and is derailing its constitutional democracy.

Many citizens demand the country restore its sovereignty – the state’s ability to govern itself and determine its own laws within its borders – by tightening border controls. Parties promise to deliver walls, raids and deportations.

What these popular debates over sovereignty and border control overlook is that politics is not defined on the borders. It comes from control over resources and production. In South Africa’s past, this was mines. Now it is cities, townships, and the infrastructure that connects them. This is where the country’s political future is being forged. This is where sovereignty is being lost. And the state is helping to make this happen.

Over the past 20 years, we have investigated the politics of migration and xenophobia in South Africa. Together we founded Xenowatch and the Mobility Governance Lab to document incidents of xenophobic discrimination and evaluate strategies to promote secure mobility and social cohesion.

In a paper published in 2022 we argued that xenophobic mobilisation in South Africa was not merely a grassroots phenomenon by frustrated communities. Nor is it the result of a “third force” or external actors out to embarrass the country. Rather, we argue, it is a political enterprise co-produced by vigilante groups and the state through acts of commission and omission. These include failing to censure those who exclude through violence and other forms of illegal conduct. It also includes migration policies and practices that demonise those from other countries.

This has resulted in the state consistently legitimising and rewarding the criminal conduct of vigilante groups.

Our research shows that xenophobic discrimination has become a feature of post-apartheid South Africa’s socio-political landscape. We argue that the only interventions capable of disrupting xenophobic mobilisation are those that lower, or ideally eliminate, its political, economic and social benefits. This must include holding people accountable for their actions, consistent and impartial application of the law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants, and joint efforts by the state and civil society to counter anti-migrant mobilisation.

On the ground

Our investigations show that in townships, “community development” associations run protection rackets determining who can live, build, or conduct business in their “communities”. They work in collaboration with local police to remove unwanted people.

Elected leaders often look away or embrace them to win votes. This is not about enforcing law or creating opportunities for all. It is not about immigration control. It is about using social division to extract resources and build power. There is often strong local support for these measures and those leading them. However, they are illegal and institutionalise state complicity in extractive violence that weakens, rather than enforces, the rule of law.

From mid-2025, Operation Dudula – an anti-immigrant social movement that has now registered as a political party – and March and March – a self-described “grassroots” civic organisation focused on illegal immigration – systematically blockaded public health facilities, denying migrants access to at least 53 clinics across KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces.

The South African Human Rights Commission found that despite engagement with the Department of Health and the National Commissioner of Police (both of which committed to intervening) vigilante conduct continued. In some instances the police refused to take statements from victims.

Despite court rulings interdicting Operation Dudula, the unlawful operations continued across the country.

Without state enforcement, court orders are only paper. Rather than being sanctioned, March and March confirmed that it had

an agreement with the SAPS (South African Police Service) and Metro Police, which don’t interfere with them.

A co-authored political enterprise

Between 2022 and 2025, Xenowatch recorded 406 verified incidents resulting in 75 deaths. This translates into an average of 102 xenophobic discrimination incidents per year.

In 2025 alone, 151 incidents were recorded. In the first five months of 2026, a further 22 verified incidents were recorded. Of the 22 incidents, 14 were violent attacks that largely followed anti-migrant protests in some parts of the country.

The recent attacks resulted in at least four people dead and hundreds displaced. Despite this, officials regularly argue this is “normal” criminality. In 2008, 2010, and again in 2026, there have been accusations of a third force determined to undermine the country’s successes or punish it for its positions on Israel and Russia.

Rather than intervene effectively, the government has addressed the rise of these political formations with a National Action Plan on Racism and Xenophobia. It contains almost no plan. Rather than marshal state resources against the anti-immigrant campaigns, it focuses on education and public events intended to foster goodwill and social cohesion. Debates and dialogues are welcome. But they do little to erode the power of gangsters and criminal networks.

When the state has acted, it helps reinforce precisely the kind of political fragmentation and profit taking it purports to prevent. Its largest police operation to protect foreigners – Operation Fiela – resulted in police demanding additional bribes from migrants, a loss of economic activity and tax revenue, and only a small reduction in immigrant numbers.

All this was done in the name of restoring citizens’ faith in the immigration system. There were winners: not immigrants or citizens, but law enforcers who line their pockets and boost their operational budgets.

A recent meeting convened at the official seat of government, the Union Buildings, provides another example. On 25 May 2026, senior government ministers convened a high-level meeting with the leadership of March and March and other organisations “to address illegal immigration and the rise in anti-immigration protests in the country”.

In our view, granting groups like this access to the highest political office lends them legitimacy and gives them a place in the South African political system. Their words are broadcast on national television and radio stations. Their ultimatums come to represent legitimate political demands.

The state may temporarily quell crises. But it emboldens these groups to carry on. The results are a politics of fragmentation and self-made laws.

What needs to be done

Protecting South Africa’s constitutional democracy requires three things done simultaneously.

First, genuine accountability for perpetrators: not symbolic arrests, but prosecutions that result in meaningful consequences for instigators and perpetrators.

Second, consistent and impartial enforcement of the rule of law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants.

Third, the building of political will and muscle by the state and civil society, to hold politicians accountable when their rhetoric or conduct emboldens exclusionary violence and practices. This is not an issue of migration management and border control. It is one of sovereignty and law.

Civil society organisations are already pursuing litigation and winning cases in court. But court orders flouted with impunity are not victories; they are further evidence of the problem. Without the political muscle to hold the state accountable for its complicity, the co-creation of exclusion will continue.

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10 Effective Things Citizens Can Do To Make Change In Addition To Attending A Protest

A crowd gathered for a “No Kings” protest on October 18, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska. Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images

BY SHELLEY INGLIS

SENIOR VISITING SCHOLAR WITH 

THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF

GENOCIDE AND HUMAN RIGHTS,

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY 

What happens now?

That may well be the question being asked by “No Kings” protesters, who marched, rallied and danced all over the nation on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2025.

Pro-democracy groups had aimed to encourage large numbers of Americans to demonstrate that “together we are choosing democracy.” They were successful, with crowds turning out for demonstrations in thousands of cities and towns from Anchorage to Miami.

And while multiple GOP leaders had attacked the planned demonstrations, describing them as “hate America” rallies, political science scholars and national security experts agree that the current U.S. administration’s actions are indeed placing the world’s oldest continuous constitutional republic in jeopardy.

Once a democracy starts to erode, it can be difficult to reverse the trend. Only 42% of democracies affected by autocratization – a transformation in governance that erodes democratic safeguards – since 1994 have rebounded after a democratic breakdown, according to Swedish research institute V-Dem.

Often termed “democratic backsliding,” such periods involve government-led changes to rules and norms to weaken individual freedoms and undermine or eliminate checks on power exercised by independent institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.

Democracies that have suffered setbacks vary widely, from Hungary to Brazil. As a longterm practitioner of democracy-building overseas, I know that none of these countries rival the United States’ constitutional traditions, federalist system, economic wealth, military discipline, and vibrant independent media, academia and nonprofit organizations.

Even so, practices used globally to fight democratic backsliding or topple autocracies can be instructive.

In a nutshell: Nonviolent resistance is based on noncooperation with autocratic actions. It has proven more effective in toppling autocracies than violent, armed struggle.

But it requires more than street demonstrations.

Tactics used by pro-democracy movements

So, what does it take for democracies to bounce back from periods of autocratic rule?

Broad-scale, coordinated mobilization of a sufficient percentage of the population against autocratic takeover and for a renewed democratic future is necessary for success.

That momentum can be challenging to generate. Would-be autocrats create environments of fear and powerlessness, using intimidation, overwhelming force or political and legal attacks, and other coercive tactics to force acquiescence and chill democratic pushback.

Autocrats can’t succeed alone. They rely on what scholars call “pillars of support” – a range of government institutions, security forces, business and other sectors in society to obey their will and even bolster their power grabs.

However, everyone in society has power to erode autocratic support in various ways. While individual efforts are important, collective action increases impact and mitigates the risks of reprisals for standing up to individuals or organizations.

Here are some of the tactics used by those movements across the world:

1. Refuse unlawful, corrupt demands

When enough individuals in critical roles and institutions – the military, civil servants, corporate leaders, state government and judges – refuse to implement autocratic orders, it can slow or even stop an autocratic takeover. In South Korea, parts of the civil service, legislature and military declined to support President Yoon Suk Yeol’s imposition of martial law in 2024, foiling his autocratic move.

2. Visibly bolster the rule of law

Where would-be autocrats disregard legal restraints and install their supporters in the highest courts, individual challenges to overreach, even if successful, can be insufficient. In Poland, legal challenges in courts combined with public education by the judiciary, lawyers’ associations initiatives and street protests like the “March of a Thousand Robes” in 2020 to signal widespread repudiation of the autocratic government’s attacks on the rule of law.

3. Unite in opposition

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado from Venezuela, is an example of how political parties and leaders who cooperate across differences can offer an alternative vision.

Novel candidates can undermine the ability of autocrats to sow division and demonize major opponents. However, coalitions can be difficult to form and sustain to win. Based on experiences overseas, historian Anne Applebaum, author of “Autocracy Inc.,” has called for a pro-democracy coalition in the U.S. that could unite independents, Libertarians, the Green Party, dissident Republicans and the Democratic Party.

4. Harness economic power

Everyday consumers can pressure wealthy elites and corporations that acquiesce to, or prop up, would-be autocrats through boycotts and other methods, like the “Tesla Takedown” in the U.S. that preceded a drop in Tesla share value and owner Elon Musk’s departure from his government role. General strikes, led by labor unions and professional associations, as in Sudan or Myanmar, can be particularly effective.

5. Preempt electoral manipulation

Voting autocrats out of office remains the best way to restore democracy, demonstrated recently by the u-turn in Brazil, where a pro-democracy candidate defeated the hard-right incumbent. But this requires strategic action to keep elections truly free and fair well in advance of election day.

6. Organize your community

As in campaigns in India starting in 2020 and Chile in 2019, participating in community or private conversation forums, local town halls or councils, and nonpartisan student, veterans, farmers, women’s and religious groups provides the space to share concerns, exchange ideas and create avenues to take action. Often starting with trusted networks, local initiatives can tap into broader statewide or national efforts to defend democracy.

7. Shape the story

Driving public opinion and communicating effectively is critical to pro-democracy efforts. Serbian students created one of the largest protest movements in decades starting in 2024 using creative resistance – artistic expression, such as visual mediums, satire and social media – to expose an autocrat’s weaknesses, reduce fear and hopelessness and build collective symbolism and resilience.

8. Build bridges and democratic alternatives

Bringing together people across ideological and other divides can increase understanding and counter political polarization, particularly when religious leaders are involved. Even in autocratic countries like Turkey or during wartime as in Ukraine, deepening democratic practices at state and local levels, like citizen assemblies and the use of technologies that improve the quality of public decision-making, can demonstrate ways to govern differently.

Parallel institutions, such as schools and tax systems operating outside the formal repressive system, like during Slobodan Milosevic’s decade-long crackdown in Kosovo, have sustained non-cooperation and shaped a future vision.

9. Document abuses, protect people, reinforce truth

With today’s technologies, every citizen can record repressive incidents, track corruption and archive historical evidence such as preserving proof of slavery at danger of being removed in public museums in the U.S., or collecting documentation of human rights violations in Syria. This can also entail bearing witness, including by accompanying those most targeted with abusive government tactics. These techniques can bolster the survival of independent and evidence-based media, science and collective memory.

10. Mitigate risk, learn and innovate

The success rate of nonviolent civil resistance is declining while repressive tactics by autocrats are evolving. Democracy defenders are forced to rapidly adjust, consistently train, prepare for diverse scenarios, try new techniques and strategically support each other.

International solidarity from global institutions, like European Union support for democrats in Belarus or Georgia, or online movements, like the Milk Tea Alliance across Southeast Asia, can bolster efforts.
Democracy’s future?

The end of American democracy is not a foregone conclusion, despite the unprecedented rate of its decline. It will depend, in part, on the choices made by every American.

With autocracies outnumbering democracies for the first time in 20 years, and only 12% of the world’s population now living in a liberal democracy, the future of the global democratic experiment may well depend on the people of the United States.

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Fairy Tales, Dreams—And Reality

BY ATLE HETLAND

Last week, King Charles III (74) was crowned to be the official head of state of the United Kingdom and 13 other countries, well, to be the constitutional and symbolic head. The many Brits and people from around the world who took part in the events, mostly via TV, of course, came into a fairy-tale mood. True, some were less supportive and even against the fantastic magnitude of celebrations. But maybe the fairy-tale parts have some positive functions? Maybe fairy tales can even help us see reality better, with their many facets and diversities. Maybe the ‘pomp and pageantry’, or perhaps the term is, ‘pomp and circumstance’, can help us understand and question things we have not thought of before. Perhaps daydreaming a bit in life, from time to time, is important to be able to take the many difficulties everyone will face in life, indeed now with rising inflation, leading to growing hardship, sometimes poverty even in a country such as the UK? The unique scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) advised parents and teachers to read fairy tales to the children if they wanted them to become clever and creative—and last week’s London events were ‘live’ fairy tales, not just something invented by writers. Many stories about life and traditions are beautified descriptions of reality—and such stories may not even be about royals. They could be about Pakistanis dreaming about life in the West, or Norwegians thinking about life in America 150 years ago when so many of them went to the ‘New World’. Again, maybe we ‘ordinary people’ need to use our fantasies and dream about things that are ‘bigger than life’. Perhaps it makes us happy even if we know they are exaggerations. And perhaps Einstein had a point, namely that our dreams can lead us to greater creativity, innovation and the use of our hidden talents and skills.

The formal coronation ceremony in London last week took place in the impressive cathedral of Westminster Abbey, in itself a ‘fairy-tale building’. The head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the master of the ceremony. It was a religious event, with secular state and military aspects playing lesser roles. In certain ways, it was also a family event since the new king had ‘inherited the throne’. This time, the head of state’s spouse, Queen Camilla (75), was also crowned. However, the event was toned down as compared to the event in 1953, when the previous head of state, Queen Elisabeth II (1926-2022). That time, the guest list included no less than some 8,000 people: this time, ‘only’ 2,000. They were royals and other nobility from many countries, often related to each other since intermarriages were common amongst that little ‘clique’ at the top of the class society until recently. There were heads of state, prime ministers, top politicians, leaders of international organizations, private companies, religious organisations, and so on. Many of them, have climbed the ladder and not inherited their posts and place in society, and they must have pinched their arm while attending the event, indeed being at the top of the world in an ‘ongoing fairy-tale’, not just reading about it in a children’s book.

‘Ordinary people’ were part of the event, too, or at least peep in from outside and imagine they had taken part in it. Tens of thousands lined a couple of kilometres long route of the royal procession, where the streets had been decorated with Union Jack flags, royal monograms and more. The King and Queen travelled in a century-old, golden fairy-tale horse cart from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, their official residence. In spite of the rainy weather, people enjoyed the festive atmosphere with brass band music, a lot of hustle and bustle, and perhaps even getting a glimpse of the dignitaries as they passed by. Some anti-monarchists were there, too, with yellow posters saying that the outdated institution should be gotten rid of. But recent opinion polls show that over sixty percent of the Brits want to keep the ‘fairy-tale institution’, so it is likely to be there in our lifetime—and that of King Charles III.

We should remember that if there is something the UK is good at, it is organizing royal state events. At this time, we know that the UK needs something to make it be seen in the world—now after the end of the British Empire, and recently, pulling out of the European Union, and other issues, too, such as that of Northern Ireland and Scotland. Maybe there will be a loosening of the state-church ties in the UK in the future. Still, through the existing system, religious aspects are included in the state, not making it entirely secular. I believe it is important to keep that tradition, not least at a time when it seems that more young people in Europe have a closer connection to religion than people in the previous couple of generations. Also, religion has important moral and ethical advice to individuals, societies and states, influencing political decisions, with local and international consequences.

Care for the poor and needy is central to believers in all faiths; solidarity and love for one’s neighbour are more important than ever in the turbulent world we live in. If the royals and the ‘fairy-tale institution’ of King Charles III and Queen Camilla can have some positive contributions to peace and peace movements, that would be good. In certain ways, fairy tales make us think with the heart, encouraging us that we don’t always have to be super-intellectual. We need dreams and fairy tales, too. If we look around us today, the big development mistakes are made by people who think they are great intellectuals and realists. We need both types of people, of course, and Einstein knew that; he was walking on two legs, one leg, or maybe one side of the brain, planted in dreams and fairy tales, the other, deep into reality, working for tangible social and material change and development in the world.

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Activist's Nobel Highlights Child Labor In India

Children rescued by the workers of the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save Childhood Movement, run by Kailash Satyarthi, watch the news of Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai on television at the Mukti Ashram.

PATNA, INDIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — When the Nobel Committee announced that Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi had won the Peace Prize, a skinny 13-year-old boy was running around serving cups of milky tea to customers at a tiny tea stall in eastern India.

By law, Raja Manjhi should not be working at all. But, like millions of other children across India, he has been forced out of school and into a job to help his impoverished family. Despite the country's rapid economic growth, child labor remains widespread in India, where an estimated 13 million children work, with laws meant to keep kids in school and out of the workplace routinely flouted.

Satyarthi, 60, who won the Peace Prize on Friday along with 17-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, accepts that "a lot of work still remains" before children like Raja no longer have to work. Raja dropped out of school in second grade, when he was handed over to the owner of a tea stall in the eastern city of Patna to pay off his father's 5,000 rupee ($80) debt. The money was needed because Raja's mother was sick.

He has no idea what a Nobel Prize means. And he has no idea when his father's debt will be repaid so he can go back to his village. Across India, children — some as young as 5 or 6 — end up working in all sorts of jobs. Many, like Raja, are in bonded labor, bound to their employers in exchange for a loan and unable to leave while in debt, which can last forever.

Others, like 13-year-old Srabani Das, need money so their impoverished families can eat. Srabani, still a child herself, is a baby sitter for a middle-class family's 1-year-old girl in the eastern city of Kolkata.

It's a job she has had for a year and which pays only about 800 rupees ($13) a month, which she sends home to her family of poor farm laborers. Srabani lives with her employers, and has no fixed work days or time off.

Srabani has heard of the Nobel Prize, thanks to receiving a bit more of an education than Raja after studying up to the sixth grade. She was happy that an Indian had won the award, but added, "It won't change my life."

For more than three decades, Satyarthi and the organization that he founded, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Movement, has worked to rescue children like Raja and create awareness to keep others like Srabani in school.

In 2006, India banned the hiring of children under 14 as servants in homes or as full-time workers in restaurants, tea shops, hotels or spas, mandating that they must remain in school. But such laws can be nearly impossible to enforce.

It's not unusual to find girls as young as Srabani, and sometimes even younger, taking care of an infant for a middle-class family. Across the country, they are found in upscale shopping malls and fancy restaurants, entertaining children while the parents shop or dine.

In return, they earn a pittance, as well as food and a place to sleep, which is usually in the family's living room or on the kitchen floor. For the children themselves, the issue is not as clear-cut as many outside India would think. They come from bitterly poor families, and in many cases are their families' sole breadwinners.

Rohit Kumar came to the northern Indian city of Lucknow two years ago, when he was only 11. His father worked at a construction site, while he worked at roadside food stalls. His father went back to their village last year, but Rohit stayed behind to work at a tea stall, where he works up to 15 hours a day washing utensils and serving customers.

"I like this job," he says, adding that it fetches him two meals a day and about 800 rupees ($13) a month, more money than he has ever had in his life. But Rohit does not go to school and gets sad when he watches other children play cricket on the streets or in playgrounds.

"I want to play cricket," Rohit says. "I have seen how children play this game, but I do not have enough time." And what of the law that makes his job illegal? "I serve tea at the local police station. All the cops know me," he says. "So who will enforce the law?"

Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writers Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, and Manik Banerjee in Kolkata, India, contributed to this report.

Most Elegantly Dressed: Imat Akelo-Opio

Ugandan native and currently residing in Australia, Imat Akelo-Opio founded the Otino International, a non-profit organization which provides sustainable development through medicine in post-conflict Africa beginning with Northern Uganda.
Otino's mission statement: Every human is precious and not one shall be left behind, regardless of background, creed or culture. Otino-international is a Christian organization reaching to the greater Africa and the world by changing lives through medicine, education and empowerment for all generations to come.