1008664295__20260621__0 Anti-migrant rhetoric in South Africa is increasingly being combined with Islamophobic claims about religious dominance and cultural takeover, widening the targets of far-right mobilisation, writes Dr Imraan Buccus.
Across the world, the right has increasingly made xenophobia one of its central mobilising strategies. Migrants are blamed for unemployment, pressure on public services, crime, social breakdown and the failures of government. In many countries, particularly in Europe, this anti-migrant politics has become tightly entwined with Islamophobia.
Migration is presented not only as an economic or administrative problem but as a threat to national culture, religious identity and civilisation itself.
South Africa’s anti-migrant politics is now following this path. The xenophobic project led by March and March and supported by other authoritarian and far-right forces is beginning to combine hostility towards migrants with hostility towards Muslims.
The language has shifted from claims about migrants taking jobs and places in schools and hospitals to warnings about a Muslim “takeover”, Muslim “dominance”, an “Islamic invasion” and the introduction of Sharia law.
