As South Africans, we seem to have stubbornly enduring hostility toward African migrants. The xenophobia on display in May 2008 is not the same as the kind witnessed today. With the onboarding of Afrophobic sentiment to the digital space, we now see an emerging implicit effort to engage in a form of self-deceptive moral disengagement. Finding themselves having to justify what was once more reprehensible, Afrophobes who organize rallies through social media are now aware of the implications of being labelled an Afrophobe—yet still want to do the thing without being called the thing. 

Of late, the Afrophobe relates to his Afrophobia by rendering the noun a misnomer, contesting its meaning, rationalizing it, and calling it by a different name: patriotism. Beware, reader, of these strategic shifts in rhetoric that are used to Trojan-horse what still constitutes the dehumanization, harmful stereotyping, and disregard for human dignity of African migrants. Afrophobia now wears a cloak of rationalizations that make inconspicuous the very dangerous disdain for African migrants.

The infamous May 2008 xenophobic attacks, which claimed 62 lives and displaced more than 100,000 African migrants, are perhaps the most heart-wrenching in recent memory. Jephias Matunhu observed that these attacks emerged from “the failure of the South African government… to manage society.” The failure was identified as the South African government’s inability to manage the poverty crisis in South Africa, which continues to disempower and dehumanise the majority of the population. Perhaps due to the insurmountability of the poverty crisis, those who participated in the May 2008 xenophobic attacks may be redirecting their indignation, considering it more manageable to concentrate their outrage into a conspicuous, eradicable target: the African foreigner. African foreigners, accused of taking lower wages and bringing crime with them, are considered to be exacerbators of the poverty crisis whose absence would, in a crudely utilitarian sense, be preferred.

In intellectual circles and civil society groups focused on the protection of non-nationals, Afrophobic behaviors are met with some reproach and condemnation. The groups acknowledge South Africa as a society deeply afflicted with violent tendencies, calling for the government to take impactful steps to counteract xenophobic narratives and sanction those who engage in xenophobic actions.

Despite the reproach it has been met with, Afrophobia has continued apace in South Africa:  Operation Dudula’s 2023 vigilantism and expelling of foreign nationals from Soweto on account of their “hatred of foreigners;” the emergence of new political parties platforming anti-African-immigration, and the establishment of the #PutSouthAfricaFirst movement online are just a few examples.

Operation Dudula marked a pivotal moment shift: sporadic xenophobic “attacks” morphed into a formalized paramilitaristic “civil movement,” and the phantasm of the African immigrant was crystallized. The African immigrant, as a status occupiable by anyone not “visibly” South African, was concretized as the primary site of crime, the destroyer of South African lives, and, according to Operation Dudula, “the root cause of economic hardship in South Africa.”

Operation Dudula evoked images of “cleaning up communities,” “making communities safer,” and “reclaiming country and community.” Costumed in military camouflage, members of Operation Dudula posed as the bastions of law and order, a force that would exorcise illegal foreigners from South Africa. Such actions should be understood in context: South African citizens see themselves as taking the state’s functions into their own hands—ensuring economic well-being, protecting the country, eradicating crime, and controlling migration. There has been a significant effort to reframe Afrophobia as an effort to restore law and order. We have witnessed a move from using derogatory terms like kwerekwere to the legalese of “illegal alien” and “undocumented immigrants.” This new language is not accidental. It’s employed to disarm potential critics of xenophobia. It conjures up a Manichean divide where to be Afrophobic is to be on the right side. It congeals anti-immigration sentiment with the preservation of law and order. South Africans thus take on a new status from xenophobic attackers to defenders of the law and South African society. The cognitive dissonance is immaterial, and the law and its protection of the rights and dignity of immigrants are rendered immaterial. Calls for expelling migrants are intended to be indistinguishable from calls for law and order.

How so? Being an illegal or undocumented African migrant is an imposed identity, a presence that the African immigrant carries with them, regardless of their actual immigration status or desire for legality. At the Home Affairs office in Marabastad, outside Pretoria, many hungry and desperate African migrants, some seeking legality for years, gather daily, even stampeding for a chance at legal status. The African migrant’s desire for legality, of course, is impotent in disarming Afrophobic sentiment, and this demonstrates a clear shift away from the purely economic justifications for the violent dislike of African foreign nationals. It would be remiss to treat this narrative shift as merely accidental.

Bastein Dratwa, compiling a digital ethnography of the burgeoning Put South Africa First (PSAF) movement, demonstrates how hatred of African migrants and calls for their exodus are linked to patriotism and the protection of South Africa’s future. Informed by modern slavery replacement conspiracies, which claim that foreigners are wilful modern slaves secretly conspiring to take over the country, PSAF activists fly the South African flag while touting Afrophobic sentiment to position themselves as patriots and guardians.  They insist that “South Africa needs to prioritize South Africans.” As such, African migrants are considered an imminent threat to South Africans, allowing themselves to be exploited so they can eventually take over the country and make the children of South Africans slaves in turn. The African migrant stands no chance against this frenzied mindset that perpetuates an imagined, imminent danger, which needs to be controlled and contained.

On social media, these anxieties manifested as an online immigration panopticon, where Chidimma Adetshina’s daring to be Miss South Africa resulted in many South Africans becoming fly-by-night forensic investigators seeking to simply “check” if Adetshina was, in fact, legally in the country. This resulting frenzy was symptomatic of a polycrisis of capitalism—the desire to simultaneously locate and eradicate our anxieties. It is for this reason that the “illegal” migrant is a target to be sniffed out and removed. Concentrating the polycrisis into an identifiable, perceptible and expendable entity, one simultaneously exercises power over it, obliterates it and calms the concomitant anxieties associated with it.

Afrophobes are self-conscious individuals explicitly aware of how they are perceived by those who fight against their message. They respond defensively, seeking to retain the initial impulse of Afrophobic indignation and sentiments while finding ways to make them appear reasonable and justified in the face of potential public scrutiny. There’s a psychic need to save face, a deep-seated desire to convince oneself that one is doing the right thing, a desire to justify the harming of others, and to wash off the “stink” of Afrophobia by positioning the defense of African migrants in South Africa as unpatriotic, debasing, and being on the wrong side of the law.

Beware, reader, of the excavation and contestations of meanings, which seek to make it more challenging to call Afrophobia by name. The compelling narratives of cleanliness, legality, patriotism, and protection are intentionally appropriated to be alluring, bias-affirming, and disarming of moral conscience. Those committed to pan-Africanism cannot engage as if nothing has changed. The pan-Africanist ought to be equipped to dismantle the new alluring presentation of Afrophobia. A good place to start might be to strike a delicate balance between being empathetic to the socioeconomic hardships faced by the majority of South Africans and stressing the importance of preserving the human dignity of every person within South Africa’s borders. Indignation should be reserved for the government’s pursuit of neoliberal policy and its failure to confront the capitalist exploitation of workers that underpins the enduring economic crisis.