The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights has warned that violence against African migrants in South Africa reflects a 'longstanding pattern' of grave rights violations, yet the response from political leadership has been marked more by silence, denial and escalation than accountability. As xenophobic rhetoric becomes normalised and even rewarded in public life, the line between governance and vigilante authority continues to blur.

One week ago, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights issued a statement on the violence targeting African nationals in this country. It listed the dates -- 1998, 2008, 2009, 2015, 2022, 2025. It used the word vigilante. It described what is happening as a "longstanding pattern". It noted that there has been a "grave violation" of the rights enshrined in the African Charter - a charter that South Africa helped shape and is meant to defend.

I read it twice, because of how little it needed to say.

It is a thin document. It carries no enforcement. The state it is addressed to has not yet responded meaningfully. But it does something almost no senior South African political figure has been willing to do this year: it names the thing for what it is, in language that does not flinch.

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Read against that statement, the silence of much of SA's political class, with few exceptions, becomes louder. We have been here before. Each time, the script has been the same: a flashpoint, a wave of violence, a slow response, a task team, a policy paper and then drift until the next time.

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