Beyond Xenophobia: The Economic Pain Driving SA’s Migration Debate

• Beyond Xenophobia: The Economic Pain Driving SA’s Migration Debate
• South Africa’s migration anger may be less about borders than personal debt, rising costs, and a shared household finance crisis.

Every Africa Month, South Africa marks the African Union’s 63-year-old dream of shared sovereignty, shared prosperity, and a borderless continent, building together. Africa Day fell on 25 May. The flags went up. The speeches were made.

That same week, the March and March movement staged anti-migration protests in Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Durban. Ghana’s diplomatic mission warned its nationals to close their shops and offered repatriation. Nigerian community associations issued similar alerts. Human Rights Watch urged South African authorities to act.

The Money Argument Of It All

At the centre is an economic claim is the notion that foreign nationals are taking jobs, suppressing wages, and straining public systems. Migrant communities counter that they pay taxes, create businesses, fill skills gaps, and spend locally. Africa Month’s language of trade, integration, and the AfCFTA sits uneasily over all of it.

This is according to Sebastien Alexanderson, Head of National Debt Advisors, who said both claims deserve scrutiny and neither side is getting it.

What The Numbers Really Say

With unemployment at 32.7% and youth unemployment at 60.9%, the debate centres on competing pressures: jobs, informal trade, remittances, and strained public services on one side; tax contributions, business creation, skills shortages, and local spending on the other.

“Non-national dominance in spaza shops and street trade is seen as crowding locals out, while remittances are viewed as money leaving South Africa. Migrants counter that their businesses create jobs, fill skills gaps, and support the economy through local spending,” said Alexanderson.

“Both can be true at once. The real question is which effect is larger, where, and for whom,” said Alexanderson.

The Household Crisis Behind The Anger

He said what was missing from the entire debate was an honest look at the debt and personal finance picture on both sides.

“With 75% of South Africans who borrowed last year using credit to buy food, not assets or luxuries, the household crisis is clear. And many foreign nationals, often managing more than one currency, are under severe financial pressure too,” said Alexanderson.

Alexanderson said while it was true that unemployment among foreign-born residents is significantly lower at 18.2% compared to 34% for locally born South Africans, this could also be read as evidence that foreign nationals are filling roles the domestic labour market cannot supply.

“The unemployment rate tells you who is working. It does not tell you whether a job was taken from someone. Those are very different questions, and conflating them is how this debate stays stuck,” said Alexanderson, adding the movement resonates because South African households are under severe financial pressure, a crisis that immigration alone cannot explain.

A Structural Crisis, Not A Simple Migration Story

Alexanderson argues that the deeper problem is structural. Two decades of unemployment above 25%, worsened by the energy crisis, skills mismatch, weak infrastructure, and post-COVID debt pressure, all predate immigration and outweigh its labour-market impact.

“The March and March movement has successfully channelled that financial anguish toward immigration. Whether that direction is accurate is a separate question from whether the anguish itself is legitimate, because it absolutely is,” said Alexanderson.

Similarly, the financial pressures on documented African professionals in South Africa are specific, significant, and almost entirely absent from public conversation precisely because those experiencing them stay silent.

Alexanderson says many over-indebted foreign national clients avoid formal help because they fear, wrongly but deeply, that a financial paper trail could affect their immigration status.

For many African professionals, remittances add another pressure, with South African credit often used to fund family emergencies, healthcare, and education across borders.

A R3,000 remittance may leave South Africa, but only after that person has likely paid rent, bought food, used transport, and contributed to the local economy.

Where Both Sides Need To Be More Honest

The movement must face evidence that migration did not create South Africa’s unemployment crisis, while migrant advocates must acknowledge that concerns about informal trade and public services are real, even when the answers are not xenophobic.

“The tragedy is that both groups are often trapped in the same financial crisis, facing the same debt pressure, rising costs, and lack of a real safety net.”

As Africa Month Closes, One Number Worth Sitting With

As Africa Month closes, the gap between the AU’s vision of unity and the reality in Johannesburg and Tshwane is stark: South Africans and African migrants are not mainly fighting each other, but the same rising costs, expensive credit, and job-poor economy.

“When I look at consumers facing a debt crisis walking through our doors every day,” says Alexanderson, “I don’t see an immigration debate. I see a cost-of-living crisis wearing different faces. That is the number that should be uniting people this Africa Month, not the one being used to divide them.”

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Author: Omega Ngema from Financial Wealth Holdings on behalf of National Debt Advisors.

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Ope Adetayo: Ope Adetayo is a Nigerian journalist who has worked for the BBC World Service and the Voice of America. He is
known for his reporting on the African continent.