Anti-immigration protests in South Africa on Friday have focused on the country's deepening tensions over undocumented migration, unemployment, poor service delivery and deteriorating social cohesion, as civil society groups warned that public anger could escalate into violence and foreign nationals could be made scapegoats.
Speaking in a television interview, Dr Mbongiseni Buthelezi, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said the right to protest is constitutionally protected, but demonstrations cannot be allowed to escalate into threats or violence against migrants – including those who are legally documented and living in the country lawfully.
Buthelezi said, “Our position is that anti-immigrant protests – while people have the right to protest legitimately and that is protected by our constitution – we cannot support any indication that violence is going to occur.” “If people have grievances against the state, pressure should be put on the state, but it cannot be done in an illegal manner which may also humiliate other people.”
The demonstrations are taking place against a backdrop of long-standing hostility towards immigrants in parts of South Africa, where outbreaks of xenophobic violence have occurred periodically since 2008. Buthelezi argued that the warning signs go back even further, pointing to events in the 1990s, when foreigners were already being blamed for the country's social and economic difficulties.
He cited former President Nelson Mandela's 1995 remarks condemning the tendency to blame South Africa's problems on outsiders, saying the country had failed to learn important lessons from those earlier episodes.
According to Buthelezi, one of the biggest missed opportunities is the lack of sustained community-level dialogue to build trust and cohesion before tensions reach crisis point. He said efforts to create peaceful coexistence cannot be reactive or limited to moments of instability.
“The way we build social cohesion and the way we create ways for people to live together needs to be through ongoing processes of dialogue,” he said. “It's not when we reach a crisis point that we start needing to talk.”
His comments underline a central debate in South Africa: how policymakers should distinguish between legitimate public concerns over crime, unemployment and border management, and rhetoric or actions that turn into xenophobia.
Buthelezi described migration as part of a broader structural challenge rather than a single cause of South Africa's economic crisis. He described the issue as a product of local, regional and global pressures, including weak economic opportunities in neighboring states, governance failures within South Africa and universal human drives to seek better livelihoods.
In that view, anti-immigrant sentiment risks obscuring the underlying causes of social despair. Buthelezi said the country's democratic state has in many cases failed to deliver on the constitutional promise of a better life for all, leaving many residents feeling excluded and angry. At the same time, instability and weak livelihood opportunities elsewhere in the region have increased migration flows to South Africa.
This means, he argued, any sustainable response must go beyond short-term political fixes and avoid making migrants the face of broader governance failures.
“We need to stop scapegoating people and taking short-term views,” Buthelezi said. “We need to work to create sustainable solutions that can solve these problems for the long term.”
In policy terms, he called for a collective regional response led by the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, rather than a narrow national approach. Such a strategy, he said, should focus on building sustainable regional economies that can improve livelihoods across borders and reduce the desperation that often drives migration.
Domestically, Buthelezi said the government's response must also tackle corruption, poor public service delivery and weak leadership – issues he suggested were at the heart of the grievances now emerging in the streets. Public anger reflects a growing sense that state institutions are not working at the pace or scale required, he said, while political and business elites are perceived as serving narrow interests rather than those of the broader population.
He linked the debate to South Africa's strive for a more inclusive economy capable of creating jobs on a large scale, arguing that job creation is essential if the country is to reduce social tensions and make meaningful progress on inequality.
The interview also touched on a particularly sensitive fault line: why hostility over undocumented migration often appears to be disproportionately directed at African and other black or brown migrants, while other foreign communities – including many European migrants – are less frequently targeted.
Buthelezi said the pattern cannot be separated from broader global and historical dynamics. He pointed to anti-immigrant trends seen in Europe and elsewhere since at least 2011, where the response has often focused on black and brown communities. In South Africa, he said, similar dynamics intersect with the enduring legacy of colonialism, which dehumanized people of African descent and left attitudes that are deeply embedded.
Additionally, he said, migrants who are targeted often live alongside low-income South Africans in densely populated urban communities, particularly in inner-city areas. In these settings, economic desperation and social proximity can combine to make neighbors the most visible targets of public anger.
Nevertheless, Buthelezi insisted that this did not justify attacks or threats. Rather, it highlights the need for a more honest reckoning about the country's economic failings, historical biases, and the weakness of the institutions that mediate the conflict.
The protests have now put renewed pressure on South African authorities to balance the enforcement of immigration laws with the protection of constitutional rights and human dignity. For business leaders, investors and policymakers, the unrest is also a reminder that migration tensions are inseparable from the country's broader economic and governance challenges.
As South Africa heads towards local government elections later this year, the debate is likely to intensify. Buthelezi's message was that unless corruption was curbed, service delivery improved, regional cooperation deepened and social cohesion actively rebuilt, the cycle of anger and xenophobic flare-ups could continue.
For now, events unfolding across the country underscore a bitter truth: In one of Africa's most industrialized economies, migration has become a lightning rod for frustrations rooted far beyond the border.