Mobs in South Africa are hunting, beating and killing Nigerians and other African nationals in attacks that officials can no longer call simple xenophobia. What is happening is a targeted campaign of racial hatred against black African foreigners, plain and simple.
The violence has taken horrifying forms. Groups have stormed public hospitals and forced pregnant women from other African countries out of wards. Shops owned by foreign nationals have been looted and burned. On the streets, African migrants face harassment, beatings, and murder. Witnesses report victims pleading for their lives before being killed.
When perpetrators justify these attacks, they blame economics and job theft. This argument falls apart under any real examination. White South Africans, who make up less than nine per cent of the population, control more than 80 per cent of the economy. African migrants are not the cause of South Africa's inequality. They are often victims of the same system. Targeting them is morally wrong and intellectually dishonest.
What makes this worse is that Afrophobia has moved into mainstream South African politics. Government officials and influential voices have legitimised, amplified, or simply tolerated this hatred. When leaders normalise hostility toward Africans, violence becomes predictable and cyclical.
Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, stands out for consistently rejecting Afrophobia. He reminds South Africans that African nations supported their struggle against apartheid and that the real economic power lies with the white minority. There is no justification, he says, for attacking black Africans. His call for African unity contrasts sharply with those who fuel division and violence, insisting that police and courts, not lynch mobs, should handle crimes by foreigners.
The African Union's Africa Peer Review Mechanism raised this alarm in 2007. The report stated that despite the solidarity black South Africans showed other Africans during the anti-apartheid struggle, foreigners of African descent were facing brutality and detention. The report warned that xenophobia was rising and needed to be stopped immediately. Nineteen years later, the situation has only deteriorated. In the past six weeks alone, unemployed South African nationals without education or skills have taken the law into their own hands, attacking foreign nationals and blaming them for job losses.
Previous attacks had clear warning signs. Nigerians and other Africans running informal economy businesses were becoming targets. South African authorities knew this was coming but have not shown the will to stop it. The government's weakness in protecting African migrants puts both those foreigners and South Africa's reputation at serious risk.
