Rabbie Serumula, author, award-winning poet, journalist.
South Africa treats foreigners like stains on a shirt it cannot afford to wash. Every few years, the country gathers itself into another angry chorus about “illegal foreigners”, and suddenly the state discovers urgency.
Police vehicles arrive. Raids are televised. Press conferences multiply. Ministers speak in the language of operations and enforcement. Communities march beneath South African flags as if patriotism itself has become a weapon.
Meanwhile, the sewage still leaks. The taps still cough air. The lights still disappear. And millions of unemployed South Africans still wake up every morning to the humiliation of being economically unnecessary.
This week, developments in Durban exposed the fragile relationship between poverty, frustration and migration in South Africa. Foreign nationals camped outside police stations and refugee centres, claiming they feared attacks linked to anti-migrant mobilisation ahead of a planned national shutdown on 30 June.
