SACP unequivocally rejects xenophobia and xenophobic vigilantism in all respects

Saturday, 27 June 2026: The South African Communist Party (SACP) unequivocally condemns the threats, intimidation and attacks directed against African migrants, including the unlawful "deadline" proclaimed by vigilante groupings for African migrants to leave South Africa by 30 June 2026.

No private grouping has the authority to determine who may live, work or travel in our country. Such conduct undermines the Constitution, the rule of law, human dignity, equality, democratic governance and the values of African solidarity. The SACP calls on workers, communities, trade unions and all democratic forces not to join vigilante-group deadlines and marches.

As we commemorate the 71st anniversary of the Freedom Charter, the SACP calls on workers of South Africa, Africa and the world to unite against xenophobia, racism, tribalism, imperialism and capitalist exploitation. The Freedom Charter declares: "There Shall be Peace and Friendship." It affirms that South Africa shall respect the rights and sovereignty of all nations, strive for world peace and resolve disputes by negotiation rather than war, uphold equal rights and opportunities for all, and recognise the rights of all African peoples to independence and self-governance as the basis for close cooperation.

The SACP also rejects any conduct by the state that appears to legitimise, accommodate or affirm the unlawful deadlines set by vigilante groupings. The government must not govern through fear, panic or capitulation to tribalist or xenophobic pressure. It must uphold lawful, humane and rights-based migration governance while addressing administrative failures that leave many people undocumented through no fault of their own.

Whether inside or outside government, a genuinely class-conscious or disciplined Left movement will never exploit the suffering and insecurity of the working class, regardless of nationality, for narrow electoral or other gains. Instead, it will strive to unite all victims of capitalism, irrespective of nationality, in the common struggle against imperialism, monopoly capital and exploitation. The SACP therefore unequivocally condemns the electoral opportunism that has become part of the problem, where some have sought to inflame xenophobic sentiment or have wavered in the face of it through equivocation, silence, posturing or even tacit endorsement of vigilante deadlines and actions that they should denounce without qualification. Such opportunism serves only to divide the working class, weaken its unity and organisation, and deflect legitimate anger away from the capitalist system and those who profit from exploitation and oppression.

The multiple crises that have crippled and are still crippling the ability of millions of individuals and families to support life are not caused by African migrants but are fundamentally rooted in the inherent contradictions and systemic failures of the capitalist system. This is compounded by decades of reformist neo-liberal policy failures and maintenance of the paradigm of entrenched private monopoly dominance and concentration, deindustrialisation, mass unemployment, widespread poverty and extreme inequality, while preserving or even reinforcing the structure of ownership and accumulation of wealth on a capitalist basis. These crises are further intensified by imperialist domination, which perpetuates the exploitation of Africa and other dominated global regions through the plunder of strategic natural resources, debt dependency, externally driven destabilisation, regime-change machinations and interventions, and wars that undermine sovereign development and force millions of people to migrate in search of safety, work opportunities and human dignity.

By no means is migration the cause of South Africa's economic and broader social transformation challenges but one of the consequences of the capitalist system's inequality and uneven development on a regional and global scale. To single out and blame African migrants for unemployment, poverty and crime is to obscure the real source of these crises, shield monopoly capital from accountability and divide the working class along narrow nationalistic lines. Things like racism, tribalism, ethnicity, xenophobia and narrow nationalism serve the interests of capital by turning workers against one another. The SACP rejects all attempts to scapegoat African migrants and reaffirms that the struggle of South African workers is inseparable from the struggle of the workers and poor of Africa and the world against capitalism, imperialism and all forms of exploitation in pursuit of a revolutionary Left outcome, socialism, peace, democratic development and shared prosperity.

Neo-liberal policies, including austerity, privatisation, including through outsourcing and, associated with these, unbundling of state ownership, macro- and micro-economic liberalisation and deregulation, often advanced under the influence of imperialist-dominated international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, together with corruption and other forms of governance and administrative failure, have systematically weakened the developmental capacity of the state across Africa and much of the Global South. These policies have constrained public investment, blocked industrialisation, eroded the provision of quality public services, entrenched dependency on primary commodity exports and mercilessly exploitative external finance, and deepened unemployment and poverty. The resulting social and economic crises have become major drivers of displacement and forced migration as millions of people are compelled to seek livelihoods beyond their national jurisdictions. Violence against the victims is not a solution but a problem.

In South Africa, migration data show that the international migrant population is relatively small, estimated at roughly 2.5 million to 3.2 million people, about 4 to 5 per cent of the population. The data from state authorities also show that there has been no massive recent net influx of international migrants into South Africa. Migrants cannot credibly be blamed for South Africa's unemployment and poverty crises.

South Africa has about 13 million unemployed people, by the expanded definition that includes discouraged work seekers. The unemployed include millions of young people and over one million unemployed graduates. This is not because workers are "unemployable". It is because the capitalist economy subordinates the right to work to the pursuit of private profit, creating employment only where it serves capital's private wealth accumulation interests while simultaneously reproducing a reserve army of labour, an expanding unemployed and underemployed population, not only in South Africa but throughout Southern Africa, the African continent and the Global South under conditions of imperialist domination and global uneven development and cross-border inequality.

Structural and cyclical unemployment, coupled with extreme poverty, are generated by the capitalist system and exploited by capitalist bosses in farms and other agricultural workplaces, in hospitality and restaurants, in platform-based work dominated by corporations such as Uber, Uber Eats, Takealot and Amazon, and across other sectors of the economy to weaken workers' organisation and collective power and bargaining, reduce labour's share of income from production and trade, and maximise profits. These capitalist bosses, who are routinely showered with praises as the private sector is referred to in speeches by presidents, prime ministers and other heads of state or government, and in whose interests neo-liberal structural and other reforms are pursued, further deepen exploitation through the super-exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers. The precarious conditions under which many migrant workers are compelled to survive, owing to the conditions that forced them to leave their national jurisdictions, provide capitalist bosses with a powerful means to undermine labour standards and divide workers along national lines, pitting victims of the same exploitative system against one another.

To be sure, the fundamental contradiction is not between South African workers and migrant workers, not between Irish workers and workers of other nationalities, not between US workers and Mexican workers, nor between European workers and workers from elsewhere. The fundamental contradiction is between labour and capital. As part of this contradiction, imperialist policies, interventions and machinations pursued by the US and its European allies have generated destabilisation, wars, underdevelopment and economic and social crises in many countries, directly generating the push factors that forced and still force millions of people to migrate in search of safety, work and a better life. Xenophobia is an ideological weapon that diverts working-class anger away from monopoly capital, imperialism and the failures of the capitalist system and redirects it against vulnerable workers and communities.

Xenophobia is also a political instrument of right-wing, populist political parties and opportunistic politicians who exploit the hardships and insecurities generated by capitalism to mobilise support, divide the working class and advance their electoral fortunes. Instead of confronting monopoly capital and the systemic causes of unemployment, poverty and inequality, they scapegoat migrants in pursuit of votes and political power, which they use in pursuit of the interests of the capitalist bosses who sponsor them with party-political donations.

Africa's migration patterns must be understood in the context of inequality and uneven development, colonially imposed borders that divided the same people, mismanaged labour migration systems, imperialist extraction, debt dependency, wars, destabilisation and underdevelopment. South Africa's economy itself was built through regional labour migration, especially from countries such as Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Swaziland. The peoples of Southern Africa have long been connected through family, language, culture, labour, struggle and shared history.

While acknowledging that, just as there are some South Africans involved in criminal activity both in South Africa and abroad, there are also some migrants involved in criminality both in their national jurisdictions and in South Africa, the SACP vehemently rejects the false claim that migrants are generally responsible for most crime in South Africa. Criminality has no nationality, and crime must be confronted without resorting to xenophobic, ethnic, tribalist and racist stereotypes or collective blame. The failure of governments to combat crime, strengthen law enforcement and address economic and social roots cannot be blamed on migrants, whether documented or undocumented. The causes of these failures lie in the capitalist system, its failures, crises and policies, particularly neo-liberal policies such as austerity, which have weakened state capacity, undermined public institutions and service delivery, and created conditions in which corruption and the capture of law enforcement authorities by criminal and mafia networks have become established and flourished.

Crime must be fought wherever it occurs, but it must not be racialised, tribalised or nationalised. Crime must be confronted irrespective of the offender's nationality, whether the offender is a rapist, murderer, human trafficker, cybercriminal, robber, vehicle hijacker, house robber, drug dealer or any other type of criminal. Criminality has no nationality, and the law must be applied equally and without fear or favour. Criminality is not a nationality. Political opportunists who weaponise crime statistics to promote xenophobia, racism and tribalism must be exposed and defeated.

The SACP calls for:

1. Firm action against xenophobic vigilantism, intimidation and violence.

2. Lawful, humane and efficient migration governance.

3. Stronger action against employers who super-exploit migrant and other workers.

4. Defence of equal labour rights for all workers.

5. Accelerated industrialisation, public investment and employment creation policies.

6. Deeper and coordinated Southern African and broader African regional integration and development.

7. Peace, security and cooperation across the African continent.

The answer to unemployment, poverty and inequality is not xenophobia. The answer is a Left and socialist-orientated transformation and development of the economy, industrial and balanced broader development, decent work, co-ordinated regional integration and working-class unity.

As we mark the 71st anniversary of the Freedom Charter, the SACP reaffirms its historic clause: "There Shall be Peace and Friendship." South Africa must be a country of solidarity, equality, peace and cooperation with the peoples of Africa and the world.

The SACP calls on workers, peasants, youth, women and progressive forces across South Africa, Africa and the world to reject every attempt to divide the working class by nationality, ethnicity, race, language or documentation.

Workers of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
FOUNDED IN 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA.
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