The images emerging from South Africa in recent weeks have stirred painful memories across the continent — frightened families sleeping in the cold, overloaded buses ferrying desperate migrants toward border posts, and thousands of foreign nationals scrambling to leave communities they once called home amid mounting fears of xenophobic violence.
From Cape Town to Johannesburg and from Beitbridge to Lilongwe, a regional humanitarian crisis has unfolded after anti-immigrant groups intensified campaigns demanding the removal of foreign nationals from South Africa.
The tensions escalated around the June 30 ultimatum issued by vigilante formations such as March and March and Operation Dudula, triggering panic among migrant communities.
Reports indicate that approximately 25 000 foreign nationals fled or were repatriated, while Zimbabwe alone facilitated the return of more than 58 000 of its citizens through organised and self-repatriation processes.
For many observers across southern Africa, the crisis has reopened difficult historical questions about solidarity, migration and the region’s moral obligations toward one another.
During apartheid, many African countries opened their borders, schools and communities to South African exiles fleeing racial persecution.
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Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania and other frontline states bore enormous economic and security costs while supporting South Africa’s liberation struggle.
Thousands of South African freedom fighters lived, trained and studied in neighbouring countries for years.
Now, critics say, the scenes unfolding in democratic South Africa stand in painful contrast to the spirit of Pan-African solidarity that once defined the region.
The current wave of displacement has particularly affected Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans, Nigerians and Congolese.
Many migrants have described fleeing intimidation and threats after anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated in townships.
A monitoring report by the South African Human Rights Commission warned of an emerging humanitarian crisis, documenting hundreds of migrants, including women and children, stranded outdoors without shelter.
For many Zimbabweans, the crisis has revived comparisons between South Africa’s current treatment of African migrants and Zimbabwe’s own historical handling of foreign nationals after independence in 1980.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Zimbabwe hosted and integrated migrants from Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Rwanda.
Large numbers of Malawian and Zambian migrants worked on farms and in mines dating back to colonial times.
Yet some analysts warn against romanticising Zimbabwe’s own economic history.
Former minister of National Healing and Reconciliation, Moses Mzila Ndlovu, challenged the popular narrative that Zimbabwe was once exceptionally prosperous.
“My opinion is that Zimbabwe is a country that was never that prosperous,” Mzila Ndlovu said.
“Perhaps we could say yes, it was economically better than the countries that you’ve just mentioned — Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and DRC.
But what probably misled people into thinking that it was prosperous was the leftovers from the colonial times, from the racist regime of Smith.”
He argued that Zimbabwe’s relative economic strength during the first decade after independence largely reflected inherited colonial infrastructure rather than newly created wealth.
“Soon those leftovers got exhausted because Zimbabwe itself had never created the kind of wealth that would genuinely attract anyone into the country,” he said.
Bulawayo Zapu secretary Vivian Siziba noted that the inherited economy created labour opportunities that reduced tensions between locals and migrants.
“Most of those menial farm jobs absorbed those immigrants and furthermore, Zimbabweans were reluctant to work on farms, meaning there was nothing to contest for,” Siziba said.
“Let’s not forget that the Malawian and Zambian immigrants dominated the mining and agricultural sectors since colonial times.”
Siziba argued that the collapse of Zimbabwe’s industrial and manufacturing sectors later transformed millions of Zimbabweans into economic migrants themselves.
“Since the economic meltdown and the demise of both extractive and manufacturing sectors in the turn of the century, the whole country has been pushed to be economic refugees in South Africa,” he said.
South Africa remains the continent’s most industrialised economy and continues attracting migrants despite high unemployment and worsening inequality.
Yet that same economy finds itself trapped in fierce political debates over immigration and collapsing public services.
Beneath the political rhetoric lies a deeper continental tragedy.
Countries that once sheltered liberation fighters are today watching their own citizens flee fear and uncertainty in a democratic South Africa many once viewed as the ultimate symbol of African freedom.
For thousands of displaced migrants currently sleeping in temporary camps and border reception points, the ideals of Pan-African solidarity increasingly feel distant — while ordinary Africans continue paying the highest price.