The recent resurgence of xenophobic attacks and anti-immigrant mobilisation in SA has once again exposed deep divisions within our society.
Whether expressed through violent attacks, threats against foreign-owned businesses, or public demonstrations demanding the removal of fellow African citizens, these actions have generated intense debate about immigration, border control, crime and economic hardship.
These are important issues that deserve serious discussion.
However, if we focus only on our fellow Africans, we risk missing a more troubling question: What does xenophobia reveal about the psychological state of South Africans?
Many South Africans are living under immense pressure.
Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Poverty and inequality continue to shape daily life.
Public services are often unreliable, while corruption scandals have eroded trust in political leadership.
For many communities, the promises of democracy remain painfully distant.
In such circumstances, frustration, anger and disappointment are understandable.
African psychology, as articulated within a relational understanding of human life, invites us to read these tensions not as discrete eruptions of violence, but as expressions of a disturbed communal harmony in which the moral and affective fabric of relatedness has been fractured.
African psychology, according to Augustine Nwoye, is a cultural and relational system of thought that understands human behaviour, identity, and wellbeing as fundamentally rooted in communal interconnectedness, moral order, and shared meaning.
So, when people feel powerless in the face of large and complex challenges, they may redirect their anger towards those who appear vulnerable, accessible and different.
This is the psychology of scapegoating.
Fellow African citizens are often made to carry symbolic blame for everyday hardships that are more directly rooted in persistent unemployment, uneven service delivery, corruption, and the broader failures of governance that continue to shape lived experience in SA.
In African psychology, the self is understood as fundamentally embedded within the community as a collective self, meaning that xenophobia is not merely an expression of prejudice but a rupture in the shared communal psyche.
The tragedy is that, while this misdirected blaming may momentarily restore a false sense of emotional relief, it does not heal the deeper communal disharmony, thus the cycle of xenophobic violence continues to repeat itself.
Driving out our African neighbours does not create jobs.
Intimidating foreign-owned businesses does not repair public institutions.
Violence against fellow Africans does not address inequality.
Instead, it diverts attention from the systemic challenges that affect everyone.
It begs the question: Why are mostly black fellow citizens of the continent attacked and not white immigrants?
African psychology often recognises human life as embedded within ancestral consciousness and a broader moral and spiritual order, where social disorder is understood not only in economic terms but also as a disturbance in moral balance and continuity across generations.
In this light, xenophobia is revealed not as a solution to socio-economic hardship, but as a profound moral and communal dislocation that signals the urgent need to restore relational harmony, justice, and ethical coherence within South African society.
SA continues to carry the psychological wounds of slavery, colonialism, apartheid and economic exclusion.
While political liberation was achieved in 1994, many forms of social, economic and psychological deprivation remain.
From an African psychological perspective, xenophobia reflects unresolved collective trauma rooted in slavery, colonialism and apartheid.
When these wounds remain unhealed, pain is redirected sideways rather than upwards towards the systems that produced it, creating a cycle in which wounded communities’ wound others.
This reality stands in stark contrast to the philosophy of ubuntu.
Ubuntu is often translated as “a person is a person through other people,” but it is more than a slogan about kindness. It is an understanding of human existence itself.
Ubuntu teaches that our humanity is relational, that our wellbeing is interconnected, and that we become fully human through our relationships with others.
Ubuntu is not only an ethical philosophy but also a psychology of relational identity and a model of mental wellbeing grounded in interdependence.
Viewed through this lens, xenophobia represents more than prejudice. It signals a breakdown in relational consciousness.
It reflects a growing inability to recognise ourselves in the humanity of others.
This is particularly troubling in a country whose liberation struggle depended heavily on solidarity from across the African continent.
Many African nations provided refuge, resources and political support to South Africans during the darkest years of apartheid.
To treat our African neighbours as permanent outsiders is to forget a history built on shared struggle and mutual dependence.
Given this backdrop, slavery, colonialism and apartheid lives on not only as history, but as an intergenerational psychological inheritance that continues to shape how pain, fear, and exclusion are transmitted across communities.
These are not past events but living psychological realities embedded in community memory and identity.
Xenophobia fractures a historically shared African consciousness that once sustained collective resistance.
The Eastern Cape, with its rich traditions of resistance, community and liberation thought, has a special role to play in this conversation.
This is the province that helped shape some of SA’s most influential ideas about human dignity, justice and collective responsibility.
If xenophobic sentiments are gaining traction here, we must ask what this says about the broader psychological condition of our society.
The answer may be uncomfortable.
South Africans certainly have the right to debate immigration policy, border management and economic priorities. These are legitimate public concerns.
But such debates must be conducted without sacrificing the dignity and humanity of others.
African psychology offers a pathway beyond xenophobia by restoring the principles of ubuntu, helping communities to heal collective wounds, rebuild social harmony, and recognise that our humanity is inseparable from the humanity of our African neighbours.
The pathway beyond xenophobia can be made more actionable and culturally grounded through ubuntu-based community dialogues, restorative justice practices, inter-community storytelling, and collective rituals or forums aimed at rebuilding social trust and shared histories.
Liezille Jacobs, associate professor, psychology department, faculty of humanities, Rhodes University
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