South Africa’s migration debate has become increasingly intertwined with questions of Islamophobia, online disinformation, foreign influence and political instability.
In this interview with One Nation Media (ONM), Professor Usuf Chikte, Emeritus Professor of Health Systems and Public Health at Stellenbosch University, argues that the country’s migrant crisis cannot be understood in isolation from wider economic failures, the rise of anti-Muslim narratives and what he describes as coordinated efforts to deepen social divisions.
He also discusses South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), allegations of a “third force” and practical steps he believes could help prevent further unrest.
Q: What do you believe are the main causes behind South Africa’s ongoing migrant crisis?
UC: The migrant crisis is not, at its root, about migrants at all. It is about poverty, inequality, unemployment and homelessness that 30 years of neoliberal economic policy have failed to resolve.
Rather than confront that failure, political and commercial interests find it far more convenient to redirect public anger downwards, towards the most vulnerable and visible target available. It is the oldest trick of divide-and-rule politics: when people ask why there is no housing, no employment or no water, the answer offered is “blame the foreigner”, never “blame the system”.
But there is also something more deliberate happening. Since South Africa brought its case against Israel before the ICJ, we have witnessed what appears to be a coordinated effort to punish and discredit the country internationally. Part of that effort involves manufacturing internal instability.
Migration debates, anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks on organisations such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) are converging in a way that is too well-timed, well-resourced and internationally networked to be dismissed as coincidental.
Muslims, in particular, are being portrayed simultaneously as responsible for illegal migration, politically suspect for supporting Palestine and disloyal to South African interests. That convergence is engineered, not organic.
Q: Are the xenophobic and Islamophobic sentiments driving parts of this movement, particularly online, organic and grassroots?
UC: No. The genuine frustration within poor and working-class communities is real, and I would not dismiss it. However, the sentiment driving organised and coordinated online campaigns — including bot networks, concerted smear operations and disinformation — is not grassroots.
Big capital and Zionist-aligned interests are the organ grinders here, while ordinary, angry citizens are too often the unwitting monkeys turning the handle to someone else’s tune.
We have seen this directly. Digital forensic investigations into Islamophobic accounts driving this narrative repeatedly point towards networks with links to Israel.
Organisations that expose Israeli apartheid and genocide — including the PSC, the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) and humanitarian organisations such as Gift of the Givers — are targeted not because they have done anything wrong, but because they are effective.
This is lawfare and information warfare dressed up as spontaneous public outrage. It is manufactured consent, not popular consciousness.
Q: Do you believe a “third force” is fuelling the current unrest and division? If so, who is behind it, and why?
UC: Yes. The social base being harnessed is the same one cultivated by the apartheid state during the 1980s and 1990s to derail the liberation struggle.
At the time, hostel-based vigilante violence, Inkatha-linked militias and covert security police funding were used to turn black South Africans against one another — Zulu against Xhosa and hostel-dwellers against township residents — allowing the real enemy, the apartheid state itself, to escape scrutiny.
The strategy was never really about ethnicity. It was about preventing unity among the oppressed.
Today, the targets have shifted to migrants and Muslims, but the architecture is recognisable: external funding, coordinated messaging, opportunistic amplification by political actors who benefit from division and a media ecosystem willing to platform these narratives uncritically.
The money and direction now come from Zionist-aligned capital and networks invested in discrediting South Africa’s ICJ case and silencing Palestine solidarity work. They are using the same playbook once employed by the apartheid security establishment.
Q: Do South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel, Trump and Musk’s “white genocide” claims, secessionist aspirations in the Western Cape and KZN, and the current anti-migrant wave have anything in common?
UC: Yes. They are all facets of the same project: an attempt by external and domestic forces to recolonise South Africa because they cannot tolerate an independent, assertive and morally confident African state.
Each of these campaigns seeks to delegitimise South African sovereignty and dictate the country’s foreign policy and domestic politics from outside.
The ICJ case exposed Israel’s genocide and triggered international retaliation. The “white genocide” narrative promoted by Trump and Musk seeks to discredit land reform and constitutional transformation by reframing the beneficiaries of apartheid as its victims.
Secessionist rhetoric in the Western Cape and KZN threatens the very unity that gives South Africa leverage on the international stage. Meanwhile, the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim wave divides the working class against itself.
These may appear to be different fronts, but they share one objective: to weaken South Africa’s ability to act as a sovereign and principled nation and force it back into line.
Q: Are any of the grievances raised by groups such as March and March and others legitimate?
UC: Some of the underlying grievances are entirely legitimate, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Unemployment, deteriorating public services, crime and the widespread belief that the government has failed ordinary citizens are real and deeply felt. People are not wrong to be angry.
What is illegitimate is the direction in which that anger is being channelled: towards migrants and religious minorities rather than the economic and political failures responsible for their conditions.
A movement can have genuine grievances at its base while still being captured, funded or steered towards destructive and divisive politics.
That is precisely what is happening here: real pain is being redirected by opportunists and external interests towards targets that will never resolve the underlying problems.
Q: What can the South African government and citizens of conscience practically do to prevent further unrest, division and violence?
UC: The government must adopt a migration policy that is lawful, humane and evidence-based — one that addresses genuine concerns without scapegoating entire communities.
Political leaders across the spectrum must unequivocally reject religious and ethnic prejudice rather than tacitly benefiting from it through their silence.
Law enforcement agencies must act decisively against incitement and physical attacks on protesters, journalists and humanitarian workers. Social media platforms must also apply their own hate-speech and disinformation policies consistently.
Citizens of conscience have a role to play by building genuine cross-community solidarity between South African and migrant working-class communities through joint economic forums, shared community structures and political education.
This would deprive divide-and-rule politics of its social base.
Local initiatives involving joint street committees, worker cooperatives and unity campaigns between South African and migrant residents have demonstrated that solidarity from below is both possible and effective.
That is ultimately the antidote: a working class and citizenry that refuse to be turned against themselves.
Usuf Chikte is Emeritus Professor of Health Systems and Public Health at Stellenbosch University. He formerly served as Executive Head of the Department of Global Health and as Associate Dean in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. He has served on numerous regulatory boards in health and education and is currently Coordinator of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Prof. Chikte is active in the South African BDS Coalition, an affiliate of the Palestinian-led BDS National Committee (BNC).
