South Africa’s Xenophobia Problem — Let’s Stop Pretending

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Here’s a tell: call almost any South African and they’ll ask you “How is Africa?” — as if their country somehow floats off the southern tip of the continent on its own private tectonic plate. It’s not a slip of the tongue. It’s a worldview. South Africa has spent decades quietly convincing itself it isn’t really African, and it shows.

Now explain this: why does South Africa impose stricter visa requirements on fellow Africans than the UAE, China, and a long list of countries that have no historical, geographic, or cultural ties to this continent at all? A Ugandan, Nigerian, or Congolese passport holder can often get into Dubai or Guangzhou faster and with less humiliation than into Johannesburg. Why?

Because xenophobia in South Africa isn’t just the mob violence we see flare up in townships every few years — burning shops, beating up Zimbabweans, chasing Somalis out of their businesses. That’s just the loud version. The quiet version sits in government offices, drafting visa regimes, immigration policies, and work permit rules specifically designed to keep other Africans out. It’s xenophobia with a stamp and a signature.

And the rest of the continent keeps quiet about it. We welcome South African retailers, banks, breweries, and telecoms into our markets — Shoprite, MTN, Standard Bank, DStv — and they extract billions from our economies. But when our citizens try to enter theirs? Suddenly the borders get thick, the paperwork multiplies, and the suspicion is palpable.

Pan-Africanism cannot be a one-way street. South Africa needs to decide whether it’s part of Africa or just doing business with it.

Written by

A'ita Jaffer Joel

An Infrastructure Consultant, Entrepreneur and Motivational Speaker. CEO Joadah Consult

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