The greatest threat facing SA is not migration. It is the growing willingness to blame migrants for problems created by the state itself.
Delivering his budget vote address in the National Assembly on 2 June, 2026, President Cyril Ramaphosa made some remarks on migration which revealed a contradiction that has increasingly come to define South Africa's (SA's) approach to immigration.
On the one hand, he acknowledged an important truth.
"We must never give in to violence, to xenophobia and to vigilantism."
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On the other hand, he repeated claims that have become central to the country's anti-immigrant discourse: that illegal immigration places pressure on public services and undermines efforts to create decent work.
The result is a message that attempts to condemn xenophobia while simultaneously reinforcing some of the assumptions upon which xenophobia thrives.
The first issue is conceptual.
SA does not have an immigration crisis. It has an immigration governance crisis. These are not the same thing.
An immigration crisis suggests that the country is being overwhelmed by immigrants. Yet the evidence does not support this claim. Statistics South Africa's Census 2022 data shows that immigrants comprise approximately 3.9% of the country's population. This is hardly evidence of a country being overrun.
The numbers matter because they expose the gap between perception and reality.
Perception vs reality
Public discourse often creates the...
