The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) is horrified and deeply angered by the brutal killing of 19-year-old Nhlamulo Sambo from Giyani, Limpopo, during anti-migrant protests in the Western Cape. According to reports, this young South African was allegedly attacked after being mistaken for a foreign national because he spoke Xitsonga.
SAFTU extends its heartfelt condolences to the Sambo family, friends, and community. Another young working-class life has been lost in a senseless act of violence that should never have happened.
This tragedy is exactly what SAFTU and many progressive formations have consistently warned against. Once hatred, vigilantism, mob justice, ethnic profiling, and anti-migrant hysteria are normalised, innocent people become targets. Today it is a young Xitsonga-speaking South African. Tomorrow it can be anyone whose accent, language, appearance, or surname does not fit the mob’s definition of who belongs.
This killing exposes the deadly consequences of irresponsible rhetoric that scapegoats migrants for the deep structural crisis facing South Africa.
South Africa’s crisis was not created by migrants.
It was created by decades of neoliberal economic policies, deindustrialisation, corruption, austerity, privatisation, state capture, and corporate greed that have produced mass unemployment, deepening poverty, collapsing public services, and one of the most unequal societies on the planet. Migrants themselves are often victims of the same global and regional systems of exploitation, war, poverty, and displacement that force people to leave their homes in search of survival and dignity.
Today South Africa has more than 8 million officially unemployed people, while the expanded unemployment rate stands at approximately 41.9% when discouraged work-seekers are included, according to recent Statistics South Africa data. Youth unemployment remains catastrophic. More than 63% of the population lives below the upper-bound poverty line, millions regularly skip meals, and nearly 20 million people experience food insecurity.
The country remains the most unequal society in the world, where a tiny elite accumulates enormous wealth while workers and the poor face hunger, evictions, crime, collapsing healthcare, broken schools, water shortages, electricity price hikes, and deepening hopelessness.
These conditions were not created by poor migrants selling vegetables on street corners, working on farms, cleaning homes, or surviving in informal settlements. They were created by a political and economic system that has allowed corruption, looting of public resources, illicit financial flows, corporate tax avoidance, tender corruption, and the hollowing out of the state.
Billions were stolen through state capture. State-owned enterprises were looted. Municipalities have collapsed under corruption and mismanagement. Factories have closed. Jobs have disappeared. Infrastructure has deteriorated. Public hospitals and schools are underfunded because of austerity and corruption not because of migration.
SAFTU warns that unless the real causes of the crisis are confronted, opportunists will continue redirecting legitimate anger away from those responsible and toward vulnerable people in poor communities. That path can only lead to division, bloodshed, and further destruction of working-class unity.
SAFTU has always maintained a principled position:
- Criminality must be confronted irrespective of nationality.
- The rule of law must prevail.
- Border management must function effectively.
- Drug trafficking, human trafficking, labour broking mafias, illicit mining syndicates, and exploitative employers must be decisively dealt with.
But under no circumstances can communities take the law into their own hands, conduct witch-hunts, ethnic profiling, assaults, looting, or killings.
The working class must never be divided against itself while the wealthy elite continue accumulating obscene profits and wealth. Poor South Africans and poor migrants are both victims of the same economic system that produces unemployment, hunger, homelessness, precarious work, and collapsing public services.
SAFTU notes the statement issued by the Afrika Mayibuye Movement condemning the killing and calling for justice for Nhlamulo Sambo. We welcome all voices rejecting violence and calling for dialogue instead of vigilantism.
We demand:
- A full and urgent criminal investigation into the killing of Nhlamulo Sambo.
- The immediate arrest and prosecution of all perpetrators.
- Strong action against those inciting violence and ethnic hatred.
- A national campaign against xenophobia, tribalism, and vigilantism.
- Urgent economic interventions to address unemployment, poverty, hunger, and social collapse that are fuelling tensions in communities.
The labour movement has a historic responsibility to defend working-class unity across nationality, ethnicity, language, race, and gender. The slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” cannot apply selectively.
Nhlamulo Sambo should still be alive today.
His killing must become a turning point before South Africa descends further into hatred, chaos, and bloodshed.
A statement was issued on behalf of SAFTU by the General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi.
For media inquiries, contact the National Spokesperson at
Newton Masuku
newtonm@saftu.org.za
0661682157
Media Officer
Asive Dyani
0719019564
