Mandela’s ghost

In 1994 upon taking office as South Africa’s pioneer president under black majority rule, the late Nelson Mandela espoused a vision of his country as a “people-centered society.” Speaking before a joint session of a multiracial legislature in Cape Town, the legendary freedom fighter said government would aim at “freedom from want, freedom from hunger, freedom from deprivation, freedom from ignorance, freedom from suppression and freedom from fear.”

Before that address, thousands of black South Africans lined Cape Town’s streets to cheer as scores of white-helmeted motorcycle outriders slowly led the new president’s car through downtown and up the cobblestoned path to the Parliament building. Standing atop a red carpet leading to the building that was once exclusively for whites, Mandela placed his right hand over his heart – no longer holding a clenched fist in the air as he did for many years of liberation struggle – while a military band played the national anthem. It was a new dawn for a country that had lived through 46 years of white-supremacy rule and hoped for redistribution of national wealth and opportunities to accommodate the dominant blacks.

The freedoms advocated by adorable Mandiba (as Mandela was fondly called) were by no means in the narrow tribal sense of an inverted apartheid where black South Africans would become neo-supremacists visiting violence on other races – least of all, fellow Africans who are in that country to make a living. He says in his book, Long Walk to Freedom, that to be free “is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Mandela envisaged a ‘rainbow country’ where all races – whites, blacks and coloureds – would thrive.

Today, Mandela’s statues dot the landscape of South African communities in honour of his memory, but his vision is far from realised. More than 30 years  after liberation from the oppressions of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies of the world and the black majority still largely deprived. Official records show that white people hold approximately 72 percent of registered agricultural lands despite being just between seven to eight percent of the country’s 60million population. As for urban lands, whites hold about 50 percent while black Africans hold about 30 percent. A 2025 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicated that nearly 70 percent of South Africa’s income was controlled by the richest 20 percent of the population comprised largely by whites, with the poorest 20 percent that are mainly blacks sharing less than five percent of the revenue.

South Africa’s official data showed unemployment rate at 31.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 – a slight improvement over the third quarter but yet a severe crisis, with roughly 7.8million people unemployed. The expanded definition, which included discouraged job seekers, indicated a higher figure. Youths aged between 15 and 34 were most affected as unemployment among them notched over 43 percent, according to Statistics South Africa.

With that state of things, black South Africans – particularly the youths – are angry and have found in immigrants a scapegoat for their unfulfilled dreams of post-apartheid nationhood. A toxic mix of poverty, drugs and frustration has thus snowballed into aggression against people of other African nationalities in South Africa. Curiously, the former white overlords who yet hold the country’s economy in thrall and other non-African races are spared. At least two Nigerians lost their lives in anti-immigrant circumstances recently, added to many who died previously in xenophobic assaults.

Hostility against migrants heightened in recent years with some South Africans claiming that foreigners were taking their jobs and unfairly benefitting from public services. The most notorious collectives arrowheading the hostility are Operation Dudula and the March and March group, whose members often raid businesses belonging to foreign nationals and force them to close shop.

“South African xenophobes are taking on the wrong target in venting frustration with unfulfilled dreams of their nationhood”

Operation Dudula was unveiled in Soweto in 2021, and it was the first group to formalise what had been intermittent waves of anti-migrant vigilante attacks in South Africa since shortly after white-minority rule ended in 1994. It calls itself a civic movement, but it runs on anti-migrant platform, with the word “dudula” meaning “to force out” in Zulu. The irony is: Soweto was at the forefront of anti-apartheid struggle and home to legendary Mandela; now, it is the base of the country’s most-prominent anti-migrant movement.

In a 2023 interview with BBC Africa Eye, Zandile Dabula, president of Operation Dudula, argued that foreigners were the root cause of South Africa’s economic hardships. “We must be realistic here that most of the problems that we have are caused by the influx of foreign nationals. Our country is a mess. Foreign nationals are working on a 20-year plan of taking over South Africa,” she said. Pressed on the veracity of the take-over claim, she admitted it was a rumour but said she believed it to be true, stating: “You see drugs everywhere and most of the drug addicts are South Africans rather than foreign nationals. So, what's happening? Are they feeding our brothers and sisters so that it can be easy for them to take over?”

But the presence of migrants in South Africa is grossly exaggerated. Official South African data indicates the country is home to some 2.4million migrants, which is less than four percent of the population and much in line with international norm A 2022 study by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an independent research body based in Pretoria, cited about 3.95million migrants in the country, making up just 6.5 percent of the population. That number included all immigrants, irrespective of legal status or nationality, implying that African migrants who are the target of xenophobes make up an even smaller number.

Reports said xenophobic rhetoric used by politicians and anti-migrant actors helped to fuel the myth that South Africa is overrun with migrants. A survey some years back found that almost half of the indigenous population believed there were between 17 and 40million immigrants in the country. Operation Dudula says it is concerned about huge influx of drugs into South African communities, but there is no data to sustain the claim that people who sell the drugs are not South Africans.

Not that there aren’t stakeholders in the country who want the anti-migrant bile reined in. In November 2025, a Johannesburg high court handed down judgment forbidding Operation Dudula and its leaders from intimidating, harassing, and/or assaulting individuals they identify as being non-citizens, and from making statements on social media platforms that constitute hate speech. The court, among others, also “interdicted and restrained” Dudula and its agents from demanding that any private person produce his/her passport or other identity documents to prove his/her right to be in South Africa. That verdict was delivered in a suit filed by a group known as Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia (KAAX), in which the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders held watching briefs.

The challenge is that there hasn’t been clear public messaging by South African authorities against xenophobic attacks, and this seems to be enabling xenophobes. President Cyril Ramaphosa used his Freedom Day address penultimate Monday to remind his countrymen of their debt to other African nations in the struggle against racist apartheid. But it was like code-switching last weekend when his government rejected the characterisation of recent anti-immigrant violence as “xenophobia,” and rather described the trend as sheer criminality. 

Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Thursday, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said there were “no xenophobic attacks in South Africa” and that violence targeting foreign nationals was driven by criminals, not anti-foreigner sentiment. In the same breath, she said South Africans were within their rights to protest against “the spiralling illegal immigration challenge.” A spokesperson had earlier cited Ramaphosa describing South Africa as a welcoming country. “South Africans are an open, friendly and warm people. We will reject any notion that seeks to characterise this country or its people as being xenophobic,” he said.

South African xenophobes are taking on the wrong target in venting frustration with unfulfilled dreams of their nationhood. Immigrants are survivalists under the same circumstance and should rather be admired and learnt from. Mandela’s heirs failed the people, and his unrealised vision is like a ghost haunting the land. As for Nigerian immigrants, they went seeking greener pasture in a hostile clime apparently because it yet offers them a better life than staying back home. We have a challenge to fix our own country as would dissuade japa.