South Africa's Anti-Migrant Mobilisation Has Become a Governance, Business & Continental Risk

TREVOR & ASSOCIATES STRATEGIC ADVISORY

WHEN THE STATE RETREATS: South Africa's Anti-Migrant Mobilisation Has Become a Governance, Business and Continental Risk

Follow-up to Trevor & Associates' first advisory on South Africa's anti-immigrant protests

EXECUTIVE JUDGMENT

South Africa has the sovereign right, and the public responsibility, to secure its borders, administer immigration effectively and enforce its laws. Its citizens are entitled to expect that those who enter, live and work in the country do so lawfully.

But immigration enforcement cannot be outsourced to organised civilians.

When private groups search homes, demand identity documents, remove people from their residences or decide who may work, trade or receive medical care, the central issue is no longer immigration. It is whether constitutional government retains effective authority over the country.

Trevor & Associates assesses that the anti-migrant mobilisation has entered a more dangerous phase. Nationally coordinated protest is becoming decentralised, locally organised and harder to predict. The consequences now extend to public order, workforce stability, investor confidence, diplomacy and South Africa's commercial standing across Africa.

The required response is not a choice between secure borders and human dignity. A capable state must provide both.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

The campaign has moved beyond large national demonstrations into persistent, locally organised activity.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded nearly 100 anti-illegal-migration demonstrations on 30 June alone, bringing the June total to at least 150 — more than the preceding 12 months combined. A further 45 were recorded between 1 and 20 July. ACLED's July data is the more significant finding: more than 30 per cent of that month's demonstrations turned violent, and roughly two-thirds were organised by community groups and local residents rather than by the March and March movement itself. These are ACLED-recorded events, not police statistics.

The decentralisation matters. A national movement has identifiable leaders and structures through which authorities can communicate. Neighbourhood-level mobilisation spreads through informal networks, adapts rapidly and operates without consistent leadership or discipline.

Four developments define the pattern.

In KwaNonqaba, Mossel Bay, on 29 May, about 55 shacks were set alight in the Asla Park informal settlement and two Mozambican nationals, aged 27 and 43, were killed. So was an 18-year-old South African, Nhlamulo Sambo, whose family believes he was mistaken for a foreigner because he spoke Xitsonga. More than 400 Mozambicans were evacuated from the town within 48 hours. Police have since charged suspects with murder and with incitement to commit public violence.

In Alexandra, Johannesburg, on 9 July, Reuters journalists watched protesters break down doors, remove people from their homes and hand them to waiting police vans. Among them were a Malawian woman and a small child. A Zimbabwean man detained by the marchers told Reuters, "I am a ZEP holder" — a permit that allows tens of thousands of Zimbabweans to live and work lawfully in South Africa.

Access to healthcare is being policed by private groups in defiance of a court order. The Gauteng High Court interdicted Operation Dudula in November 2025 from checking identity documents and blocking foreign nationals from clinics.

Journalists subsequently found the practice continuing, in some cases with the cooperation of clinic security staff. Human Rights Watch, reviewing the April and May escalation, reported violent attacks met with little or insufficient response from police.

Violence is also flowing in the other direction. In early July a March and March leader was shot dead outside his home in Greenfields, Ekurhuleni. The motive remains unclear, but retaliatory violence is now a live risk rather than a theoretical one.

These are no longer isolated incidents. They constitute an emerging pattern of parallel enforcement, social intimidation and weakening confidence in the state.

VIGILANTISM IS NOT PUBLIC POLICY

The frustration behind these protests is understandable. Porous borders, administrative backlogs, corruption, fraudulent documents and weak enforcement have all eroded public confidence. President Ramaphosa addressed the nation on 7 June and announced new enforcement measures, and Cabinet approved a revised white paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection in April. Neither has yet restored public confidence.

But state failure does not confer state authority upon private citizens.

South Africa is confronting two connected failures: inadequate immigration management allowed public anxiety to deepen, and inconsistent policing created space for private groups to perform — or claim to perform — functions reserved for the state.

The government itself has said this plainly. International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola, briefing on talks with Nigeria, condemned xenophobia and stated that "law enforcement remains the exclusive prerogative of the state". The principle is not in dispute. Its enforcement is.

Trevor & Associates speaks on this as a Pan-African firm, with principals and associates whose citizenship, residence and kinship span Zimbabwe, South Africa, Eswatini, Zambia and Botswana. That vantage point allows the firm to hold two truths at once. South Africa has both the right and the responsibility to regain effective control of illegal immigration, fairly and according to the rule of law — and the current trajectory is taking South Africa into dangerous territory, where frustration over illegal immigration mutates into attacks on lawful residents, disrupted businesses, diplomatic fallout and normalised mob justice.

The distinction between enforcing the law and replacing the law is becoming dangerously blurred.

THE WORKFORCE CONTRADICTION

South Africa entered 2026 with severe labour-market distress. Statistics South Africa recorded 8.1 million officially unemployed people in the first quarter and an unemployment rate of 32.7 per cent, up 1.3 percentage points on the previous quarter.

Yet some employers report difficulty replacing migrant workers who have left farms, factories, delivery networks and households. Sugarcane growers on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, supplying Tongaat Hulett's Maidstone Mill, report an estimated 30 per cent shortfall in cane cutters, with mature cane standing unharvested and losing quality.

The evidence supports a serious localised shortage, not a nationwide labour crisis — and honesty requires noting that migration is one cause among several. Maidstone's harvest was already running roughly a month late because of the mill's delayed opening following Tongaat Hulett's financial distress. The labour shortfall compounds an existing crisis; it did not create it.

The contradiction still requires an answer. High national unemployment does not mean suitable workers are available near every farm or factory at wages and conditions they can reasonably accept. Equally, businesses must confront the possibility that some operating models depend on workers whose immigration status reduces their bargaining power.

South Africa's national minimum wage has been R30.23 an hour for most employees, including farm and domestic workers, since 1 March 2026. Companies asserting that migrant workers cannot easily be replaced must answer four questions. Are all workers properly documented? Are wages and conditions lawful? Are labour brokers monitored? What makes the work unattractive or inaccessible to local job seekers?

Labour shortages and labour exploitation may exist simultaneously. Serious leadership investigates both.

BUSINESS RISK IS WIDENING

For companies, this is no longer only a political-risk issue.

It is an operational risk: intimidation of employees, sudden absenteeism, forced closures, interrupted deliveries, property damage and the loss of experienced workers with little warning. Supply chains dependent on migrant labour may prove less resilient than management assumed.

It is a compliance risk: businesses employing undocumented or underpaid workers face growing scrutiny from regulators, unions, journalists and communities.

It is a reputational risk: companies that speak only about productivity losses may appear to defend cheap, vulnerable labour, while those silent during intimidation appear indifferent to employee safety. South African brands operating elsewhere in Africa may be associated with hostility towards African migrants, regardless of their own conduct.

Senior corporate voices have recognised the stakes. Speaking at the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation winter seminar on 23 July, Standard Bank Group Chief Executive Sim Tshabalala pointed to Brexit as a caution, citing estimates that the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union cut GDP by six to eight per cent and investment by around 13 per cent. Migrants, he argued, are also consumers, tenants, borrowers, traders and entrepreneurs. At the same seminar, MTN Group Chairman Mcebisi Jonas argued that South Africa's underlying problems — weak growth, poor governance, inadequate education and infrastructure failure — would remain even if every foreign national departed.

These interventions matter because the success of major South African companies depends on trust and goodwill across the continent.

DIPLOMACY AND THE CONTINENTAL DIMENSION

The consequences are no longer confined within South Africa's borders.

The third session of the South Africa–Ghana Binational Commission, scheduled for Accra from 4 to 7 August — that is, this week — has been postponed. Ghana's government spokesperson said publicly that the anti-migrant violence would have overshadowed the agenda. Pretoria's account differs, and the two governments have since disputed both the nature of the visit and the reason for the delay. That the dispute is itself now a diplomatic incident is the point.

Nigeria has pressed South Africa over the safety of its nationals, handing Pretoria a list of 98 Nigerians it says have been killed, while South Africa has raised its own concerns about organised crime and more than 500 Nigerian nationals processed through its criminal justice system this year.

The matter has now reached the African Union, and the contest over blame the firm warned against has already begun. The AU Executive Council declined Ghana's proposal to place xenophobic violence in South Africa on the agenda of October's mid-year coordination meeting as a stand-alone item, backing instead Pretoria's call for a broad continental debate on migration's push and pull factors. Ghana has said it will take the question to the next AU summit. Nigeria has aligned with Ghana.

Pretoria has won a procedural argument. It has not resolved the underlying one.

South Africa has spent decades building political, diplomatic and economic influence across Africa. These relationships are strategic assets. Once damaged, they take years to rebuild, and deterioration translates into regulatory friction, consumer hostility and harder operating environments for South African companies.

The crisis also exposes a wider African governance challenge. People do not leave home without powerful incentives: economic decline, repression, conflict and limited opportunity drive irregular migration. Destination countries cannot solve those conditions alone. Nor can governments elsewhere invoke sovereignty to avoid scrutiny of the failures that push their citizens to leave.

What the continent needs is not a verdict but a practical African migration compact covering labour mobility, documentation, consular protection, deportation standards and the responsibilities of countries of origin and destination alike.

National sovereignty and Pan-Africanism are not opposing ideas. Responsible leadership demands both.

THE BORDER CONTRADICTION: HUMAN COST AND STATE CAPACITY

The figures must not numb us to the people behind them.

A BBC Africa report follows migrants who returned to Ghana and Nigeria after fear for their safety forced them to abandon homes, jobs and livelihoods in South Africa. They are not returning to neatly prepared opportunities. They are starting again — searching for work, trying to support families, rebuilding lives stripped of stability, income and dignity. One returnee describes being back to ground zero. That phrase captures the human cost more vividly than any statistic.

The consequences travel beyond the individual. Families lose income, children lose security, communities lose skills, and countries of origin inherit an urgent reintegration burden for which few are prepared.

Secure borders are necessary. Cruelty, intimidation and collective punishment are not immigration policy.

The contradiction is starkest at Beitbridge. The Border Management Authority reports that 72,906 foreign nationals were repatriated between 7 June and late July, most processed through the temporary repatriation centre at Musina, alongside 354 criminal cases and close to 29,000 immigration-related court matters finalised.

Yet at the same border, AFP journalists watched people haul themselves across the Limpopo on wooden rafts, bypassing the official post and disappearing into the bush before patrols could reach them. South Africa has 71 ports of entry, 52 of them land crossings, and vast stretches of borderline remain unfenced. The Border Management Authority's own commissioner has acknowledged the risk that people simply walk back in.

This is a symmetrical policy failure: too little state authority at the border, and too much unofficial force inside communities. Tighter border control must mean maintained infrastructure, trained and accountable personnel, surveillance, functioning legal crossing points and coordinated action against smuggling networks. It must not mean outsourcing enforcement to civilians.

THE ZIMBABWEAN DIMENSION

For Zimbabwe, the consequences are immediate and material. South Africa is Zimbabwe's largest single source of imports, and the Beitbridge corridor its most important road-freight gateway.

That corridor is now under visible strain. Average crossing times at Beitbridge rose 25 per cent week on week to 46 hours during 20 to 26 July, with worst-case waits approaching four days and congestion at Martins Drift limiting alternative routing. Freight queues have stretched for about 20 kilometres on the Musina side.

The effect is being felt on Zimbabwean shelves. Retailers and importers are reporting thinning stock of South African-sourced goods as consignments sit at the border, and Trevor & Associates observes this directly in the Harare market. The African Unite Borders Bus Trucks Association attributes part of the delay to the volume of repatriations passing through the same post: tens of thousands of people being processed northwards through a corridor that was already operating at capacity. When a border designed for freight is asked to absorb a population movement, cargo waits.

Zimbabweans should nonetheless be candid about the rest of the cause. Both the South African Border Management Authority and the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority attribute the backlog primarily to conditions on the Zimbabwean side: limited parking capacity, abnormal-load vehicles occupying bays and slower processing by clearing agents. New import licensing requirements introduced this year added further friction.

Both things are true, and the combination is the warning. An external shock arrived at a gateway already weakened by our own administrative failure, and the shortage reached Zimbabwean shops within weeks. A country dependent on a single crossing cannot afford to run that crossing badly.

South Africa, for its part, should speak more firmly about the governance conditions that drive migration from neighbouring states. Its quiet diplomacy towards governments such as Zimbabwe's deserves honest reassessment. It is a reasonable policy judgment, not a certainty, that stronger regional pressure for constitutionalism and accountable government could have reduced some of the conditions driving outward migration.

Regional stability depends on governments being accountable not only for domestic outcomes, but for the cross-border consequences of political and economic failure.

RECOMMENDED ACTION FOR THE SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT

• Reassert the exclusive authority of the state. Home searches, identity checks, evictions and enforcement by unauthorised groups must be stopped promptly and consistently, and existing court orders,  including those protecting access to clinics , must be enforced.

• Enforce immigration law visibly and lawfully. Publish credible, regular data on arrests, backlogs, deportations and prosecutions for fraud and corruption, and distinguish clearly between undocumented people, asylum seekers, refugees, permit holders, permanent residents and citizens wrongly perceived to be foreign.

• Strengthen labour enforcement against employers and brokers who exploit undocumented status to suppress wages and conditions.

• Establish local early-warning mechanisms linking police, municipalities, business, community leaders and diplomatic missions, to share information on threats and emerging displacement.

• Lead continental diplomacy towards a migration framework combining secure borders, legal labour pathways, regional responsibility and protection from vigilantism.

RECOMMENDED ACTION FOR BUSINESS

Boards should move from awareness to preparedness.

• Audit and quantify. Review employee documentation, wage compliance and labour-broker practices immediately. Then quantify the proportion of employees, contractors and critical suppliers exposed to enforcement, documentation changes or cross-border disruption, and identify which functions fail if labour availability tightens over the next three to six months. Hidden dependencies surface long before financial impact.

• Stress-test suppliers. Their labour shortages, transport disruption and rising costs will reach them before they reach you. Validate their contingency plans rather than accepting assurances.

• Protect people. Develop continuity plans for absenteeism, unrest, transport interruption and temporary closure, with employee-protection protocols covering safe transport, emergency communication, confidential reporting and responses to intimidation.

• Consolidate and escalate. Maintain a live executive dashboard covering labour exposure, operational dependencies, supply-chain risk and reputational vulnerability, with defined triggers that automatically prompt executive review when repatriations, shortages, disruption or consumer action intensify.

• Communicate with principle. Agree communication principles before they are needed — employee safety, continuity, lawfulness, commitment to all communities, strict political neutrality — and draft responses in advance for credible scenarios. Avoid messaging that portrays migrants as disposable or permanently cheaper labour. Explain instead how recruitment, wages, training and progression will improve to make difficult work accessible to South Africans.

• Assess continental exposure. Brands operating elsewhere in Africa should assess their vulnerability to political retaliation. Responsible companies can distinguish themselves by recruiting lawfully, paying fairly and protecting workers regardless of nationality.

• Look for opportunity. Returning skilled professionals may create new recruitment pools and regional operating models. Resilience creates optionality.

Political shocks increasingly become commercial shocks. The winners will not be those that predict events most accurately, but those that prepare earliest, respond fastest and execute with discipline.

TREVOR & ASSOCIATES ASSESSMENT

South Africa's immigration challenge is real, and its citizens are entitled to secure borders and decisive enforcement of the law.

But democracies do not outsource policing.

Once organised civilians acquire the confidence to determine who belongs, who may work and who deserves protection, the target rarely remains confined to one category of person. Nhlamulo Sambo was an eighteen-year-old South African. His family believes he died because he spoke the wrong language.

That is what vigilantism does when the state retreats. It does not stop at the foreigner.

South Africa has reached an inflection point. It can restore confidence through lawful leadership that secures its borders, prosecutes criminal conduct, protects communities and ensures fair employment. Or it can allow vigilantism and populist pressure to redefine the limits of state authority.

The choice before South Africa is larger than immigration. It is whether constitutional government will prevail over parallel enforcement and the politics of the street.

It is a governance imperative. It is an investment imperative. And it is an African leadership imperative.

Trevor & Associates Shaping Legacies, Transforming Industries and Building a Sustainable Future