In a report published in December 2021 by Xenowatch, a project at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, xenophobic violence was defined as acts explicitly targeting foreign nationals or “outsiders” because they are perceived as strangers.
It is categorised as a hate crime with the primary motive of driving foreign populations out of communities. While it primarily targets non-nationals, South African citizens from other provinces have occasionally been targeted as well. Xenophobic violence has also been orchestrated by leaders to further their own interests.
Xenophobic violence has been recorded every year since South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994. The violence peaked in 2008, with at least 150 recorded incidents. Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape were the worst affected.
Between 1994 and November 2021, Xenowatch identified 873 incidents of victimisation, which included 612 deaths, 1 184 physical assaults, 122 298 people displaced and 6 306 shops or properties looted or damaged. These are only the recorded incidents.
South Africa has moved from sporadic mob violence to an organised political entity of xenophobia.
Operation Dudula is a registered political party, which the high court described as “one of the most visible and violent proponents of xenophobia”. It has been interdicted from blocking “foreigners” from accessing healthcare and schools but the mentality persists.
Organisations such as Operation Dudula have used an online ecosystem to launch coordinated campaigns that call for support, protests and demonstrations, often framed as community-led actions to reclaim jobs, businesses or homes owned by foreign nationals.
But the actions often end in violence, illegal activism and vigilantism. The hostility towards African migrants is amplified by a heavy social media presence, as seen in trending hashtags such as #abahambe, #OperationDudula and #MassDeportationNow.
In doing so, the spaces have evolved into fertile environments for the reproduction of xenophobic attitudes among South Africans, producing an observable online culture of exclusion and hostility.
The hashtag #PutSouthAfricaFirst called for the prioritisation of South African citizens in employment and service delivery and gave Dudula significant visibility.
Since the group emerged, it has used vigilante violence to harass migrants and target their businesses. In 2022, such raids resulted in the killing of Elvis Nyathi.
The mob is not only in the streets; it is also present in racist and xenophobic speech, harassment and intimidation on social media, reflecting patterns of behaviour associated with groups such as Dudula and the Patriotic Alliance.
In November 2023, PA leader Gayton McKenzie said: “After we have been sworn in, I am going straight to the Rahima Moosa Hospital, where we are going to switch off the oxygen of illegal foreigners.” The hateful words validate the terror associated with the repulsive violence against immigrants and citizens.
Social media has become a field of mobilisation. In just four-and-a-half months, between March and July 2025, xenophobic posts on X reached 32 million people. Posts calling for “South Africa for South Africans”, defending Operation Dudula, demanding deportation and using slurs such as kwerekwere and abahambe (go away) were mentioned 5 656 times and viewed more than 1.2 million times.
The hate peaked on 27 April, 18 May and 12 June 2025, the last of which came just two days after a court hearing against Operation Dudula.
What triggered the spikes?
A post questioning foreign academics at the University of Pretoria. A call for mass deportation. And a post celebrating the eviction of foreign nationals from abandoned buildings.
This was followed by claims that foreign nationals dominate senior academic positions at the University of Fort Hare. The university issued a clear rebuttal supported by data.
The list circulated online included people who no longer worked there, never worked there or had retired years ago. In reality, Fort Hare’s 2024 recruitment process saw all 37 appointment letters go to South African scholars.
Minister of Higher Education Buti Manamela later confirmed that foreign nationals constituted 12% or so of permanent academic staff at South African public universities, a figure that has remained stable for years. There was no systematic displacement of South Africans in permanent academic posts. The data does not matter to the mob.
Why persist with a lie?
As researcher and educator Leroy Maisiri stated in a Mail & Guardian article on 21 May 2025, the xenophobic attack on Fort Hare was never about protecting jobs or fixing unemployment. It was a panic that distracted from the real failures: a dysfunctional home affairs visa system, deindustrialisation and decades of neoliberal policy that abandoned job creation.
Professor Sioux McKenna, the director of the Centre for Postgraduate Studies at Rhodes University, argued that the question parliament should be asking is not why universities employ foreign nationals but why South Africa is receiving fewer international students than before and why the government’s systems make it so difficult to attract more.
But the xenophobes are not asking those questions. They are on X. They are in the comments. They are chanting Mabahambe. And they are reaching 32 million people with lies dressed as patriotism.
Xenophobic violence is caused by a complex interplay of factors.
Long-term structural conditions in poor South African communities create a climate of discontent, usually following a smearing campaign against immigrants.
In informal settlements and townships, where people compete for scarce resources such as jobs, housing and healthcare, immigrants are perceived as “winning” and become the first targets.
Similarly, in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish communities were targeted during periods of economic hardship, political instability and unemployment. Jews were blamed for social problems, seen as competition and used as scapegoats. Governments also encouraged and tolerated anti-Semitic violence to redirect public anger away from the state.
In the South African context, resentment has evolved into hate-filled nationalism. Many people are angry about poverty and instead of blaming the system that impoverished them, they blame immigrants. Instead of confronting the state and the system of white monopoly capital that continues to shape inequality, many direct their frustration at migrants, who are easy targets.
The xenophobic attitudes are not limited to poor or uneducated South Africans; they cut across race, class, gender, age and religion.
Xenophobic violence is not spontaneous, just as political violence is not random. When democracy declines, societies become divided by race, religion and ethnicity, political leaders tolerate or encourage violence. As elections approach, violence tends to increase.
In the US, Donald Trump and other Maga leaders have relied on threats and intimidation to create and sustain fear. Political figures such as Gayton McKenzie send a similar message to citizens who support anti-immigrant rhetoric: that “we are not xenophobic”.
This erodes public understanding of what a healthy democracy should look like.
In 2008, former president Thabo Mbeki suggested that the xenophobic attacks were not spontaneous acts of hatred but a planned political operation intended to drive Zimbabweans back to Zimbabwe to vote for Robert Mugabe. If xenophobic attacks can be used as a political weapon, they can be deployed repeatedly.
If there are names in the report Mbeki referred to, why are South African community leaders and organisers protected?
Why has the country not been told who organised the killing of 62 human beings?
Xenophobic marches are organised by people who benefit politically, socially and economically. The far right has learnt that the strategy works.
The government’s denialism, by labelling xenophobic violence as mere crime rather than xenophobia, demonstrates a lack of political will and a failure to combat racism and xenophobia. The South African Police Service has failed to stop xenophobic protests because of ineffective and biased responses.
This is not a march; it is a pattern and impunity remains. Xenophobic violence is a long-standing feature of democratic South Africa, with incidents recorded since 1994. The violence extends far beyond the targeted groups, carrying severe socioeconomic, political and security implications for all South Africans.
An attack on immigrants is an attack on the entire country. People who do not see the political system as responsive to them are more likely to channel their grievances into support for violence.
South African xenophobia and Trump’s Maga movement are a distorted mirror of one another.
Former rector of the University of the Free State Professor Jonathan Jansen made this connection in a December 2025 op-ed: “The agitators, I’m afraid to say, are our black, homespun version of American Magas who will vote against their own best interests so long as the foreign national does not benefit from their labours on behalf of our children.”
The Nazis never saw themselves as fascists; they saw themselves as National Socialists. Yet by the 1930s, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were allies. South Africa’s far-right movements and Maga politics share the same xenophobic foundations.
Ncebakazi Makwetu is a lecturer in the department of liberation studies, faculty of social sciences and humanities at the University of Fort Hare.
The two are a mirror of one another.When democracy declines, societies become divided by race, religion and ethnicity. Leaders tolerate or encourage violence to further their own interests