Hatred Never Stops

Hatred is easy because it gives people a face to blame. But hatred creates nothing.

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

South Africa has rediscovered the oldest trick in politics: when the state fails, blame the foreigner.

When jobs vanish, blame the Zimbabwean. When crime rises, blame the Nigerian. When hospitals collapse, blame the Malawian. When police cannot police, municipalities cannot provide water, and Home Affairs cannot administer its own systems, blame the human being desperate enough to cross a border in search of work, safety, or dignity.

This is the poison at the heart of South Africa’s xenophobia crisis. The March and March protests, and similar movements like Operation Dudula, built themselves around the arbitrary 30 June 2026 deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave. They emerged from a country that is angry, unemployed, afraid, and tired of being governed badly.

But legitimate frustration does not justify hatred; it does not justify turning peaceful people into prey.

In the lead-up to the marches, foreign nationals fled their homes, shops were shuttered, and people were threatened, evicted, or attacked because of their nationality or perceived nationality. This is not border control, and it is not law and order. It is mass scapegoating dressed up as patriotism.

South Africa has the right to control its borders. Foreign nationals who commit crimes should be arrested. Undocumented people should be processed according to the law.

But this is precisely the point: according to the law. Not according to the mob. Not according to whether someone speaks with the wrong accent, owns the wrong shop, has the wrong surname, or looks like they might be from the wrong side of a colonial border.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that enforcing immigration law is the responsibility of the state, and the state alone. No ordinary person may demand proof of nationality. This is the minimum required of a constitutional state.

And yet, the state has too often spoken with two mouths. It condemns vigilantism, then performs immigration enforcement that makes vigilantes feel vindicated. Days before the planned marches, government announced intensified enforcement operations, roadblocks and checkpoints, and thousands of immigration-law arrests.

If this is a lawful, rights-respecting migration strategy, government should say so and prove it. But if the timing and rhetoric are meant to appease a xenophobic crowd, then the state is telling the public that intimidation works.

That is not the rule of law; that is rule by the mob.

South Africa should know better than most societies what happens when ordinary life is turned into a permanent demand to produce papers. The apartheid dompas controlled movement by making permission to exist in certain spaces dependent on documentation.

Today’s immigration law is not apartheid. But when people are stopped because they look foreign, sound foreign, or come from a community associated with migrants, the logic becomes chillingly familiar.

“Show us your papers.”

“Prove you belong here.”

That logic should terrify South Africans.

What differentiates a foreign African from a local South African in the eyes of the crowd? Biology? There is no biological marker for nationality. A border is not in the blood. It is ink on a map, enforced by paperwork.

Culture? That argument is even weaker. Zimbabweans, Basotho, Batswana, emaSwati, Namibians, Mozambicans, Malawians, Zambians, and other Africans living here are not alien civilisations. They are neighbours, workers, spouses, relatives, and cultural cousins.

The line between “South African” and “foreigner” in Southern Africa is often not a deep civilisational divide. It is a product of colonial borders, imperial administration, and modern bureaucracy. A person does not become morally alien because a colonial administrator drew a line across Southern Africa.

This is why xenophobia is such a stupid hatred. It invents a vast moral gulf where there is none. It turns paperwork into a measure of human worth.

They are human beings.

If they violate the rights of others, they should be punished for that violation. Not for their nationality. A South African murderer is not morally preferable to a Zimbabwean shopkeeper. A South African extortionist is not better for the country than a Somali trader who pays rent, feeds his family, and sells bread to the community.

Crime is caused by criminals. It is enabled by weak policing, broken prosecutions, corruption, and a state that cannot protect life and property. It is not solved by harassing random foreigners for documents.

The same is true of unemployment. Immigrants did not destroy South Africa’s education system, collapse municipalities, create load-shedding, loot state-owned enterprises, or build a patronage state. The foreigner is not the architect of this crisis – the government and its ruling party are.

The xenophobe does not see individuals. He sees categories. Every crime committed by one foreigner becomes the guilt of all foreigners.

And it never stops where its defenders claim it will stop.

Today, the target is foreign Africans. Tomorrow, it is Indians. Then it is “European settlers.” Then it is coloured people in the wrong province, Afrikaners, Jews, Muslims, whites, blacks, or anyone else who can be framed as alien enough to hate.

The mob always needs another target.

If citizenship becomes something ordinary people must prove to strangers, what protects tourists, naturalised citizens, permanent residents, refugees, mixed families, or South Africans who simply sound different?

Once suspicion becomes social policy, no one is safe.

South Africa needs proper border management, a competent Home Affairs, and a clear, fast, fair migration system. It needs to punish criminals, regardless of nationality.

But none of this requires hatred. None of this requires mobs. None of this requires humiliating peaceful people in the street.

Hatred is easy because it gives people a face to blame. But hatred creates nothing. It does not create jobs, arrest murderers, fix schools, process visas efficiently, make hospitals work, or make South Africans safer.

Criminals should be punished because they are criminals; peaceful people should be left in peace.

That is the only moral position. Once a country accepts hatred as a legitimate political tool, it will never run out of enemies. It will only run out of excuses.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a Senior Associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.