In a Sunday Times opinion column, Ivor Chipkin argues that recent anti-migrant mobilisation in South Africa reflects a broader authoritarian reaction to democratic reform.

On 11 July 2026, New South Institute director Ivor Chipkin published an opinion column in the Sunday Times examining the political forces behind recent anti-migrant protests in South Africa.

In the column, titled “Marchers fear democracy more than migrants”, Chipkin argues that the March and March demonstrations should not be understood solely as opposition to undocumented migration. He places them within a wider struggle between authoritarian nationalism and South Africa’s constitutional democracy.

Chipkin’s argument draws attention to the way failures of public administration can be exploited by political movements. The inefficiency of the Department of Home Affairs, incomplete migration records and prolonged delays in processing permits and asylum applications make it difficult to distinguish clearly between legal and undocumented migration.

In this environment, administrative failure can be converted into public resentment, xenophobic mobilisation and attempts by private groups to decide who belongs in South Africa.

The column also situates the protests within the decline of the African National Congress’s patronage system. Chipkin argues that democratic reforms, declining party control over state institutions and greater professional protection for public servants threaten political networks that have historically depended on access to government appointments and contracts.

From this perspective, migrants are being used as the immediate target of a wider authoritarian reaction to democratic change.

Readers can read the original opinion column on the Sunday Times website.

Migration has been part of the New South Institute’s programme of work from the outset. The NSI’s Migration Governance Reform (MIGRA) programme approaches the issue from the perspective of democracy, institutional capability and the modernisation of public administration.

An effective migration system requires clear legislation, reliable information, properly managed borders, functioning administrative processes and public institutions capable of making lawful decisions within reasonable periods. This approach recognises the need for the state to manage migration effectively while rejecting vigilantism, xenophobia and attempts to exclude people through arbitrary or authoritarian means.

Improving the management of migration is therefore not separate from strengthening democracy. It is part of building a capable state in which rules are understandable, records are reliable, public servants are professionally protected and decisions can be reviewed through constitutional institutions.

For readers’ convenience, the full text provided to the NSI is reproduced below.

The protests against migrants in South Africa are a sign of authoritarian panic

by Ivor Chipkin

A group calling itself March and March (as in it will keep marching) gave ‘undocumented’ migrants until the 30th of June to leave the country. On the day itself, marches took place across the country, though they were concentrated in Johannesburg and Durban. They were not huge, but they were well organised, and they succeeded in closing down the economy in many urban areas.

Statistics on the number of international migrants in South Africa is contested. The best estimates are that there are more than 4 million such people in South Africa, that is, 6% of the population. In many other African countries the proportion is closer to 8%.

The overwhelming majority are from the region, with nearly half coming from Zimbabwe. They have fled the economic collapse of ZANU PF’s violent dictatorship — a dictatorship enabled and supported by the South African government.

The March and March activists claim that they are opposed to illegal and undocumented migration; yet it is impossible to know how many people fall into this category. In the first place, the gross inefficiency of South Africa’s Home Affairs department (the equivalent of the UK’s Home Office) means that legal migrants often face extended periods of being undocumented. Home Affairs data, including permit, visa, asylum, and permanent-residence records are incomplete, poorly digitised, and not reconciled against the population count. As researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council note, the number of undocumented migrants in the country is genuinely unknown.

At first glance, March and March looks like a South African version of the MAGA movement, promising to clean up the country and put ‘South Africans first’. It is more like MAGA and ICE rolled into one. It seeks not only to protest the presence of migrants but to enforce their departure too. What makes the mood so fearful, is that growing evidence links March and March activists either to the MK party, founded by Jacob Zuma in 2023, or to the former President himself.

The last time a protest movement associated with Jacob Zuma organised on a large-scale, the country burnt, literally. On the 21st of June 2021, 354 people were killed during an insurrection that broke out after police arrested the former President for contempt of court. Activists (more like a militia) burnt trucks and blocked the main economic corridor between Durban and Johannesburg. They also set fire to shopping centres and encouraged mass looting. There were attacks on especially Indian residential areas in Durban. In the face of the ensuing violence and chaos, communities and businesses were left to fend for themselves. Memory of the failure of the government to protect the public added to fears about the 30th. This time the police and the army were on duty.

Over the last twenty years, the African National Congress has mutated. In the decade after South Africa became a democracy, the party pursued progressive, broadly social democratic policies whilst making important headway rebuilding the country as a unitary state. After 2009, when Jacob Zuma became President, the party transformed into a Tammany-hall-like machine, gatekeeping jobs in the state and tenders from government departments, and state entities. In South Africa, ambitious individuals seeking upward social mobility joined the party.

The mutation of the ANC into a patronage machine has created a class of affluent insiders whose fortunes are inextricably linked to party control of the state. The party’s electoral decline is more than a political shift, therefore. It is firstly, an economic crisis. Second, it is a carceral crisis for many. As the party’s influence over the police and prosecuting authorities declines, so does its ability to gatekeep who suffers consequences for corruption. Some have quit the party altogether, like former President Zuma, to establish new political parties. The March and March demonstrations are part of an attempt to build a new electoral majority.

The timing is telling. South Africa is a few months away from local government elections. Current polling suggests that the ANC will suffer major losses, especially in the country’s largest cities like Johannesburg and Durban. Herman Mashaba, the leader of ActionSA, has stood with the marchers, likely seeing his association with them as his route to national relevance.

Whoever is behind these marches, a small, well organised group in South Africa has occupied the public domain and policed its streets of foreigners. Moreover, it has established itself as a national organisation, cowered the political establishment and shown up the forlorn limits of the state.

Currently, the foreigner is an illegal migrant, though the definition bleeds necessarily: foreign elements, foreign cultures, foreign ideas. South Africa’s public domain is being tested by various authoritarian movements seeking to impose on the country their own illiberal definitions of who belongs in South Africa and who does not. The political domain is more and more distinguished by a nationalist camp with authoritarian tendencies and another, committed to South Africa’s constitutional democracy. In April this year, the Public Service Amendment Act was passed into law. It better insulates civil servants from inappropriate political interference and begins to close the gate to patrimonial appointments in the state. The March and March demonstrations are a reaction to the fact that democracy is rising in South Africa.