When Fear Becomes Policy: Xenophobia, Stilfontein and the Politics of Division in South Africa

 

Yesterday, government ministers gathered before the country in yet another carefully managed press conference.

Meeting as a security and governance cluster, they attempted to reassure the public that the state does not support violence against foreign nationals and that government merely seeks to ensure peaceful protest, lawful conduct and public order.

But the problem facing South Africa today is not simply whether government formally condemns violence. The deeper problem is that many of the same political actors now expressing concern helped create the political atmosphere that made this moment possible.

For years, political leaders across the spectrum have increasingly relied on the language of fear, invasion, illegality and criminality when speaking about migrants, informal workers and poor Black Africans. Public frustration over unemployment, collapsing municipalities, crime and economic decline has repeatedly been redirected toward vulnerable outsiders rather than toward the systemic failures that produced the crisis in the first place.

And each time this happened, the political calculation was clear. It was easier to blame visible and vulnerable people than to explain why communities sitting on immense mineral wealth remain trapped in poverty. It was easier to speak about “illegal foreigners” than to explain corruption. Easier to invoke criminal syndicates than to confront state collapse. Easier to mobilise anger against desperate migrants and informal workers than to admit the scale of political failure after decades of democratic rule.

What government attempted to present yesterday as neutrality therefore rings hollow. Because the current climate of hostility did not emerge spontaneously from communities.

It was cultivated.

Not only by fringe xenophobic formations seeking electoral relevance, but often through the coded and overt language of mainstream political actors themselves, including parties now governing together within the Government of National Unity.

The tragedy at Stilfontein should force the country to confront this reality honestly.

Ninety-three poor Black artisanal miners died underground after state authorities effectively imposed a siege on desperate people already trapped within conditions of extreme poverty and abandonment. The operation was politically justified through repeated references to “illegal miners,” “criminal syndicates,” “foreigners,” “illegal immigrants” and threats to national security.

The language matters. Because once human beings are reduced to “illegals,” it becomes easier to suspend empathy. Once suffering people are framed as invaders, criminals or outsiders, extraordinary violence becomes politically acceptable. And once fear replaces humanity, democratic societies begin justifying the unjustifiable.

What South Africa witnessed at Stilfontein was not simply a policing failure. It was the logical consequence of years of political scapegoating.

And responsibility does not belong only to openly xenophobic formations like the Patriotic Alliance and ActionSA.

The ANC and DA, now governing together within the Government of National Unity, cannot escape accountability for helping construct the political environment that made this possible.

For years, both parties have increasingly adopted securitised and fear-driven language around migration, informal economies and “illegal activity.” Even where their rhetoric differed in tone, the underlying political logic remained similar: social instability is blamed downward, poor and vulnerable people are framed as threats, and structural failures of governance are displaced onto those with the least power.

The Stilfontein operation exposed where this politics ultimately leads.

A democratic government effectively presided over the starvation and abandonment of impoverished Black miners while much of the country was encouraged to see them not as human beings in distress, but as dangerous “illegal miners” deserving punishment.

The dehumanisation was not incidental. It was political. And today, South Africa is beginning to experience the broader consequences of this politics.

Violence and intimidation against migrants, informal traders and vulnerable communities are increasingly becoming normalised in public discourse. Communities experiencing real suffering are being encouraged to believe that their primary enemies are other poor Africans rather than corruption, inequality, state failure and economic exclusion.

This is politically convenient. Because scapegoating vulnerable people is easier than confronting collapsing municipalities, corruption, mining wealth extraction, unemployment, failed local economic development, housing crises, labour exploitation, and the systematic abandonment of working-class communities.

In mining-affected communities especially, this dynamic is deeply dangerous. South African mining capitalism has historically relied on division between vulnerable groups using migrant labour systems, ethnic fragmentation, hostel violence, racial hierarchy, and competition among impoverished workers.

Division was not accidental to the system. It was part of how exploitation was maintained.

Today, xenophobic politics risks reproducing that same logic. Communities that should be united around demanding jobs, accountability, environmental justice and fair development are instead encouraged to turn against one another.

This weakens democratic struggle. It protects political and economic elites. And it prevents communities from confronting the real architecture of dispossession.

None of this means communities are not suffering. They are. Unemployment is devastating. Municipal collapse is real. Competition for survival in poor communities is intense.

Migration pressures can deepen existing tensions, especially where the state has already failed. But acknowledging suffering is not the same as endorsing scapegoating.

The central political question is this: Will South Africa respond to social crisis by deepening fear, exclusion and division? Or will we build a politics grounded in dignity, solidarity and justice? A mature and democratic response to the current crisis requires several truths to be held simultaneously.

Communities deserve safety, jobs, dignity and development. Corruption and state failure must be confronted honestly. Mining wealth must benefit local people. Municipal collapse cannot continue.

But vulnerable people cannot become substitutes for failed governance.

Poor Africans, whether South African or migrant, did not loot billions from public institutions. They did not design extractive mining systems. They did not hollow out municipalities. They did not capture procurement systems. And they did not create the extreme inequality that defines South Africa today.

If political leaders continue redirecting public anger toward vulnerable people, the country risks sliding further toward a politics of permanent social fragmentation. And history teaches us that once societies normalise the dehumanisation of one group, violence rarely stops there.

Today it is migrants. Yesterday it was artisanal miners. Tomorrow it may be anyone politically framed as disposable.

South Africa desperately needs another path. One rooted not in fear, but in rebuilding communities.

Communities need jobs, accountable governance; anti-corruption measures, fair local economic development, functioning municipalities, labour protections, and democratic participation.

Communities also need leadership willing to tell the truth: division will not rebuild South Africa. Hatred will not create jobs. Scapegoating will not restore dignity. And violence against vulnerable people will not resolve structural injustice.

The future of South Africa depends on whether we continue down the road of fear-based politics, or whether we rebuild a democratic culture grounded in solidarity, humanity and shared justice.

The choice is becoming unavoidable.

And Stilfontein should serve as a warning of what happens when societies stop seeing vulnerable people as fully human.