THERE are moments in the life of a people when silence becomes betrayal. The images, reports and testimonies emerging from South Africa — and now touching Zimbabwean families in places like Nompumelelo outside Buffalo City — are not merely stories of “disturbances”, “operations” or “community frustrations”.
They are warnings. They are moral alarms. They remind us that when hatred begins to wear the clothing of grievance, ordinary human beings become targets and the African ideal of Ubuntu begins to collapse under the weight of fear, anger and political neglect.
For many Zimbabweans, this pain is not abstract. It is personal. It is blood-deep. It is the story of relatives, friends, neighbours, and loved ones who crossed the Limpopo not to invade anyone’s home, but to survive.
They crossed because poverty became a daily punishment, because jobs disappeared, because industries shrank, because the social and economic fabric of Zimbabwe frayed over years of decline. They crossed because survival, for too many families, became a borderless necessity. And yet, in the places where they sought refuge, some now face eviction, intimidation, and violence. That is a tragedy that should shame us all.
The root causes of this crisis are deeper than the slogans shouted on the streets. Xenophobia does not grow in a vacuum.
It grows where economies are strained, where public services are weak, where unemployment crushes the hopes of the young, where inequality becomes normal and where leaders fail to create enough opportunity for their own people.
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In South Africa, as in many parts of the continent, people are living under intense pressure. Jobs are scarce, crime is a fear, informal trade is contested and the State too often appears absent or slow.
In that environment, migrants become easy scapegoats. They are visible. They are vulnerable.
They are outsiders in the eyes of angry communities. And once that psychology takes hold, the real causes of suffering are buried beneath the false comfort of blaming the nearest foreigner.
But let us be honest and fair: the burden of migration is real. Many Zimbabweans, Malawians, Zambians, Nigerians, Namibians and others have moved to South Africa in search of work, safety, and dignity.
That movement does create pressure on housing, schools, clinics, policing and labour markets. Anyone who denies that is not helping the discussion. Yet acknowledging pressure is not the same as justifying cruelty. A strained system must be improved; it must not be turned into a hunting ground. The answer to economic stress is not to burn people out of their homes, close their shops or demand that they “return to their own countries” as if human dignity is a privilege reserved for some and denied to others. The answer is policy, planning, enforcement and regional co-operation. The answer is not mob justice.
This is why the language of some of the protest organisers is so chilling.
When a message openly declares, “We are xenophobic,” and continues, “We want all foreigners, documented or not, out of this country as a matter of urgency,” the mask comes off. That is not a legitimate policy argument. That is naked hatred. It is the language of dehumanisation. It turns African neighbours into enemies and human beings into problems to be removed. No nation can build justice on such a foundation. No democracy worthy of the name can allow that language to become normal. And no government that values its constitutional principles can remain passive while fear is converted into violence.
What makes this even more painful is that the continent’s own promise is being betrayed by the continent itself. Africa was never meant to be a patchwork of suspicion.
The borders that now divide us were drawn by colonial powers whose purpose was not our unity, but our fragmentation. Those borders were designed to separate kin, interrupt trade, weaken solidarity and make us easier to govern and exploit.
To this day, many of our conflicts still carry the traces of that design. We were not meant to see one another only as foreigners; we were meant to see one another as fellow Africans with a shared destiny.
That is why Ubuntu matters. Ubuntu is not a decorative slogan for speeches and ceremonies. It is a moral philosophy. It says my humanity is bound up in yours. It says I become more fully human through the humanity of others. Xenophobia is the opposite of Ubuntu. Xenophobia says my pain gives me permission to brutalise you. Ubuntu says your pain is also mine.
We must also confront the failure of leadership. When people are left to organise their own rage, they create their own justice and that is where disaster begins. The State must act before hatred hardens into violence, not after bodies are already on the streets and families are already displaced into the veld.
It is not enough for leaders to issue statements of condemnation once blood has been spilled. It is not enough to say violence has “no place in our constitutional democracy” while communities remain exposed and law enforcement appears inconsistent.
Strong words matter, but only when backed by visible protection, arrests, prosecutions and real preventive action. If businesses are being closed, if people are being chased, if the police are escorting families out under pressure, then the State is already behind the crisis, not ahead of it.
At the same time, Zimbabwe must not hide from its responsibilities. It is easy to condemn abuse elsewhere and ignore the economic despair that pushes our people to leave in the first place.
If Zimbabwe had stronger job creation, better industrial growth, a stable investment climate, functioning public services and a credible path for the young to build lives at home, fewer people would be forced into dangerous migration.
That is not to blame the migrant for leaving; it is to blame decades of decay for making departure feel like the only option. A nation that cannot provide hope will export its people.
And when those people are mistreated abroad, the pain echoes back into every village, township and household. So yes, we must speak against xenophobia with full force, but we must also repair our own house.
This is where regional institutions must stop speaking in vague, diplomatic language and begin acting with urgency.
The Southern African Development Community and the African Union should treat xenophobic violence as a regional emergency, not an embarrassing local issue. We need coordinated early-warning systems, shared intelligence, diplomatic pressure, protection protocols for migrants and clear consequences for organised incitement.
We need cross-border labour frameworks, legal migration pathways and regional agreements that reduce the chaos that smugglers, exploiters, and politicians feed on. If East Africa can move towards freer movement, then Sadc should not remain trapped in old habits of fear and administrative delay.
Indeed, the whole continent should continue moving towards easier movement for Africans. Not because borders do not exist, but because borders should not become weapons against our own people.
There is wisdom in the idea of using national identity documents to ease movement between neighbouring countries, provided such systems are secure, fair and well-administered.
The point is not careless openness; the point is dignified mobility. Africans should not have to feel like criminals simply for crossing into another African country to work, trade, study or visit family.
A brother should be able to visit a brother. A sister should be able to seek opportunity without being hunted. Regional integration is not a luxury. It is a necessity if Africa is to stop bleeding talent, labour and trust across artificial lines. The more we co-operate, the less we will fear one another.
But integration alone will not solve everything. We also need hard social truth. Communities under pressure need jobs, housing, clinics, schools and transparent local governance. If local residents believe foreigners are getting more attention than they are, resentment will continue to grow. That resentment must be addressed with facts, fairness and decent service delivery.
Governments must ensure that undocumented migration is handled lawfully, but lawfulness must never slide into collective punishment. Shops cannot be shut down by mobs.
Families cannot be evicted by threats. People cannot be chased from neighbourhoods because they are seen as convenient explanations for structural failure.
We also need a better political language across the continent. Too often leaders speak about sovereignty while ignoring solidarity.
They speak about national interest as though it can only be protected by suspicion of the neighbour. But Africa’s real enemies are not the exhausted family seeking shelter, the shop owner trying to survive or the worker trying to feed children across a border.
Our real enemies are poverty, corruption, inequality, extractive economics, climate disruption, drug abuse, organised crime and systems that keep African people dependent while others profit from our minerals, our labour, and our instability. Those are the struggles that should unite us. Those are the battles worthy of our energy.
As Africa Month deepens and Africa Day approaches on May 25, we should pause and ask what kind of continent we want to become. Do we want a continent that reproduces fear against its own people? Or do we want a continent that remembers its soul? If we are serious about an Africa that is great, then xenophobia must be named for what it is: a betrayal of our history, our values and our future. It is anti African. It is anti Ubuntu. It is anti life.
The pain being felt by Zimbabweans in South Africa and by other Africans caught in this cycle of blame and exclusion, should move us into action, not just sympathy.
We must demand accountability from governments, responsibility from communities and courage from regional institutions.
We must protect the vulnerable, prosecute the violent and confront the conditions that keep producing this misery. We must stop pretending that hatred can solve economic problems. It cannot. It only multiplies them.
If we truly believe that we are one people, then we must act like one people. If we truly believe in Ubuntu, then we must reject the politics of exclusion.
If we truly believe in Africa, then we must build it together, not tear each other apart.
The Limpopo should not be a river of fear. The borders should not become graves for solidarity. And no African should ever again have to say, with tears in their voice, that their relatives and loved ones are under siege simply because they crossed into another African country in search of life.