Mbeki Challenges South Africa's Anti-Immigrant Narrative: You Are Chasing Ghosts

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki has mounted a vigorous defence of African migrants in South Africa, warning that growing hostility toward foreign nationals is built on a false narrative that shields the true architects of the country’s economic decline.

Speaking at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation and AUDA-NEPAD Business Breakfast, Mbeki argued that undocumented African migrants have become convenient scapegoats for unemployment and crime, while those genuinely responsible for South Africa’s economic troubles escape scrutiny.

We’ve got many problems here. The problem legitimately led to high levels of unemployment; that’s correct. High levels of crime, that’s correct. But the finger is being pointed at the wrong people, Mbeki said.

Economic Decline Predates Immigration Debate

Mbeki rejected the narrative linking undocumented migrants to South Africa’s unemployment crisis, noting that the country’s economic trajectory shifted long before immigration became a political flashpoint.

The levels of high unemployment in this country are not due to undocumented Africans. They are not, he stressed, tracing the country’s economic arc from post-apartheid growth rates of up to six percent through to the subsequent decline that began around 2009.

The remarks carry particular weight given South Africa’s current economic challenges. The South African Reserve Bank’s recent decision to raise interest rates, as covered in our earlier reporting on the double blow facing the economy, has raised fears of further contraction, with economists warning of additional tightening ahead.

The people who cause that decline, they are laughing in a corner there, because we’re pointing not at them, but we’re pointing somewhere else, Mbeki said. The culprits are sitting here. I can even tell you their names, but we’re pointing fingers at the wrong people.

Migration Will Continue

In a blunt assessment, Mbeki predicted that migration into South Africa would persist regardless of political pressure or anti-immigrant sentiment.

One prediction I will make is that the Africans will continue to come to South Africa. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, urging South Africans to find practical ways of managing migration rather than turning migrants into scapegoats for broader structural problems.

You are not going to solve the problem of unemployment here by shouting against undocumented Africans and leaving the culprit, he added.

His comments come at a sensitive moment. In recent weeks, nearly 300 Ghanaians have voluntarily returned home from South Africa amid heightened fears following anti-immigrant protests and growing concerns about the safety of foreign nationals.

A Call for Continental Solidarity

Mbeki closed with an appeal for South Africans to recognise the historic bonds connecting them to the rest of the continent.

People are beating drums about the wrong people and failing to understand an organic connection between these Africans on the continent and these Africans here, because we’re together in the same struggle, he said. You can’t certainly turn against them.

In one of the sharpest moments of his address, the former president accused anti-immigrant campaigners of fundamentally misreading the situation. What are we doing to say to the South Africans, the positions you are taking on this and that are wrong? Here is the truth: you are busy chasing after ghosts, and you are leaving this devil.

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