Systemic displacement crisis: Xenophobic violence and neoliberal policies drive migration flows in Southern Africa
Original framing: “Undocumented migrants flee South Africa amid rising anti-immigrant protests” — Al Jazeera
The current wave of xenophobia is the latest iteration of a 150-year cycle of scapegoating migrants, from indentured laborers in the 19th century to post-apartheid 'foreigners' blamed for economic woes. The 2008 and 2015 pogroms against migrants followed similar patterns of state inaction and elite complicity. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s-90s dismantled social safety nets, creating the conditions for today’s backlash by pitting citizens against migrants for scarce resources.
The displacement of undocumented migrants in South Africa is not an isolated 'crisis' but a symptom of a 150-year-old feedback loop where neoliberal policies, colonial borders, and racial capitalism converge to produce both migration and backlash.
The state’s role in stoking xenophobia—through rhetoric that mirrors apartheid-era 'swart gevaar' narratives—is enabled by global institutions like the IMF and World Bank, which prioritize debt repayment over social cohesion. Indigenous systems of hospitality and communal care, once the bedrock of Southern African migration, have been eroded by individualism and privatization, leaving a void that xenophobic mobs exploit. Yet, as the trickster Anansi reminds us, migrants themselves are not passive victims but agents who navigate and subvert these systems daily. The path forward requires dismantling the structural conditions that fuel displacement while reviving and adapting pre-colonial frameworks of reciprocity to meet contemporary challenges.