The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) supports the call by the South African Human Rights Commission for calm, restraint and an immediate end to the violence that has erupted in Durban involving clashes between members of March and March, refugees and the police.
We are deeply alarmed by reports of refugees being shot with rubber bullets and by allegations from refugee leaders that live ammunition may also have been used by the police. These allegations must be urgently and independently investigated. No democratic state can allow disputes and tensions involving vulnerable communities to degenerate into scenes of violence and bloodshed.
We note that the refugees are no longer at the centre where tensions initially escalated. Yet the dangerous narrative being promoted by vigilante formations remains deeply troubling.
According to the Department of Home Affairs itself, only two out of more than 450 migrants processed were found not to have proper documentation. This means the overwhelming majority were documented refugees and asylum seekers legally recognised within South Africa’s refugee and asylum system. Despite this official confirmation by Home Affairs, vigilante formations indiscriminately branded all of them as “illegal foreigners”.
This exposes the real danger of xenophobic vigilantism: people are no longer judged on the basis of facts, legal status or individual circumstances, but purely on appearance, nationality or language. Once entire communities are collectively criminalised in this manner, no one is safe.
SAFTU reiterates that the South African working class must reject xenophobia, collective punishment and vigilantism. Migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are not responsible for the catastrophic unemployment, poverty, inequality, collapsing public services and corruption confronting the majority of our people.
The state itself cannot escape responsibility for the current developments.
Firstly, South Africa continues to suffer from extremely poor border management systems that have been dysfunctional for years.
Secondly, the Department of Home Affairs remains dangerously understaffed and under-capacitated, making it impossible to process documentation efficiently and lawfully.
Thirdly, rampant corruption within Home Affairs, repeatedly exposed by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), has severely undermined public confidence and created space for criminal syndicates and document fraud.
Fourthly, the state has failed to build the administrative capacity required to process and document asylum seekers and refugees properly. Former Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi himself repeatedly acknowledged the scale of South Africa’s documentation crisis. In 2022 he stated that approximately 89% of South Africans were documented, leaving an estimated 4 million people without proper documentation, while arguing that South Africa still compares favourably with many other countries on citizen documentation. If millions of South Africans themselves remain undocumented despite being citizens, it is not difficult to understand the severe challenges faced by asylum seekers and refugees who depend on an already overwhelmed and under-capacitated Home Affairs system.
For years refugees and asylum seekers have complained about long queues, office closures, delays, backlogs and the inability to renew permits on time. When their documents lapse because of administrative failures, they are often exposed to harassment, arrest, exclusion from services and violence.
Fifthly, and most dangerously, vigilante formations have increasingly been allowed to operate openly in communities, stopping people in the streets, demanding documents, assaulting individuals and effectively imposing themselves as police officers and Home Affairs officials. In many cases this has occurred in full view of law enforcement agencies without decisive intervention.
This has created a climate of impunity and sends a dangerous message that sections of the state and political establishment tolerate or even sympathise with mob justice and xenophobic violence.
Sixthly, there are structural reasons for the crisis that the state refuses to address. These include rising unemployment that creates desperation; a good government would embark on mass job creation since there are so many tasks in society that need doing. The housing crisis is another cause of xenophobia because artificial shortages and more demand have led to higher rents – and yet the housing backlog today of three million has not changed since 1994 because policy is market-driven, and explicitly avoids construction of public housing. The township retail market is also chaotic, with extreme competition for limited consumption driving out spaza shops; a good government would follow New York City’s current and Venezuela’s early-2000s examples by intervening to ensure all basics are available at a fair price at state-owned shops.
Seventh, we have many immigrants to South Africa due to the destructive role our apartheid-era and post-apartheid ruling classes have played in the SADC region and beyond.
- Long-standing mining recruitment established super-exploitation in migrant labour relations, a process that was expanded after 1994.
- Since 1994, in sites like Zimbabwe and Eswatini, Pretoria’s foreign policy has propped up dictators.
- In the eastern DRC, Johannesburg mining houses and the SA army have long contributed to extreme exploitation and abuse that in turn contributed to the millions of deaths there and refugees; as early as 2005, Human Rights Watch condemned Anglo American for working hand-in-glove with resource-looting warlords.
- The climate catastrophe which South African capitalism contributes to more than nearly any other economy – measured by greenhouse gas emissions/person/GDP, means we will see environmental refugees flooding across our border for decades to come.
Can a South African government make a U-turn on all these factors, and get into place better leadership, policies and practices at Home Affairs, build public housing with mass public works job creation, while making foreign policy far less sub-imperialist and taking rapid strides to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote climate debt payments to Africa, and thereby finally address the structural reasons for social desperation, so that a strict no-tolerance approach to xenophobic attitudes is then widely supported?
SAFTU warns that once society normalises vigilantism against one vulnerable group, no section of the working class will remain safe. Today it is refugees and migrants. Tomorrow it will be workers, trade unionists, community activists and anyone scapegoated for a crisis created by capitalism, corruption and failed governance.
We reiterate our call on the working class and poor communities to redirect their anger towards the real architects of their misery:
- The neoliberal economic policies that have produced mass unemployment and deindustrialisation;
- Corruption and state capture that looted billions from public resources;
- Austerity measures that destroyed public services and weakened the capacity of the state;
- Corporate greed and exploitation that enrich a tiny elite while millions remain unemployed and hungry;
- The failures of government to provide housing, healthcare, education, safety and decent work.
The anger of the poor is real and justified. But that anger must not be diverted towards fellow victims of the same exploitative system.
SAFTU calls on:
- The police to exercise maximum restraint and to protect all communities without discrimination;
- Government to urgently restore lawful and humane refugee and asylum processing systems;
- Political parties to stop inflaming xenophobic sentiments for narrow electoral gains;
- Civil society, faith-based organisations and community formations to intensify peace-building interventions;
- The Human Rights Commission and independent oversight bodies to monitor developments closely and investigate all allegations of abuses by both vigilante formations and law enforcement agencies.
The working class has no future in division, xenophobia and violence. Our struggle is for solidarity, unity and a society based on justice, equality and human dignity for all who live in South Africa.
A statement was issued on behalf of SAFTU by the General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.
For media inquiries, contact:
National Spokesperson
Newton Masuku
newtonm@saftu.org.za
0661682157
Media Officer
Asive Dyani
0719019564
