Why is South Africa Shutting the Door on These Immigrants?

Many experts see the ANC’s move to scrap the ZEP as part of the ruling party’s campaign strategy ahead of general elections in 2024 where, for the first time since coming to power under Nelson Mandela in 1994, the ANC looks likely to receive less than 50% of the vote.

The ANC has failed categorically to transform the lives of its poor, Black constituents. The estimated four million foreigners, including around 1.5 million Zimbabweans, who live in South Africa are an easy scapegoat. The belief that “the foreigners are stealing your jobs” is widespread — despite research in 2016 showing that the average economic migrant to Gauteng province, for instance, actually created 2.6 jobs.

“It’s xenophobia pure and simple,” said Zimbabwean-born activist Dale McKinley, co-founder of Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia. “When a government’s own failures become manifest they resort to xenophobic discourse,” he said.

What makes the development even more disappointing is that the ANC was founded on principles of pan-Africanism — and the party was heavily dependent on the support of other African nations, including Zimbabwe, during the struggle against apartheid.

It’s xenophobia pure and simple.

As an electioneering tactic, said Ekambaram, the xenophobic rhetoric seems to be working. It has “diverted the attention of communities away from holding [the] government to account. The people have drunk the Kool-Aid.” McKinley too told OZY that the xenophobia has “played well with the ANC’s constituency,” before adding that the ruling party has felt compelled to “keep up with the opposition.”

He was referring to a broader shift in South African politics.

We must minimize the rights of immigrants and migrants. They must be made uncomfortable. What do you do if you see a cockroach in your house? You buy Doom.

But where does this leave Munda and the 178,000 other ZEP holders and their families? McKinley feels that the legal challenge from the Helen Suzman Foundation — which argues that “those who have scrupulously observed South Africa’s laws in order to live and work here under the ZEP cannot have such permits terminated without fair process, good reason and a meaningful opportunity to regularize their status” — has a good chance of succeeding in obtaining a further reprieve for ZEP permit holders. While Ekambaram sees the merits of the case, she fears that “given the current climate, the court might find it hard to rule in favor.”

Regardless, neither expert sees the ZEP being allowed to continue indefinitely. And they’re equally convinced that, as the 2024 elections approach, the ANC will continue to push the anti-foreigner rhetoric — something which, given the dire economic plight of many South Africans, could result in widespread xenophobic violence.

Since 2008, occasional outbursts of deadly violence have targeted foreigners. And just last year, 354 people were killed in riots which, although not primarily aimed at foreigners, were clearly the result of the ANC’s failure to deliver on the promises made to poor, Black South Africans.

It is painful to leave a place you have heavily invested in, and to be forced back into a country you fled because of corruption, dictatorship and an economy that is regressing.

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