Nearly three decades ago, on May 8 1996, then deputy president Thabo Mbeki rose in the Constitutional Assembly and delivered what would become one of the defining speeches of democratic SA.
It was not a speech about race. It was not even fundamentally a speech about politics. It was a meditation on belonging.
“I am an African,” Mbeki declared.
With those four words, he sought to weave together the fractured histories of indigenous peoples, settlers, slaves, exiles, freedom fighters and ordinary citizens into a single national story.
He spoke of the Khoi and San, victims of conquest; of Malay slaves from the East; of migrants from Europe; and of liberation struggles that stretched across the African continent.
SA, he argued, was not an island. It was a chapter in a larger African narrative.
The question today is unsettling but necessary: If Mbeki delivered that speech in 2026, would the audience still applaud?
Or would some ask whether the African he imagined still exists?
Recent months have witnessed renewed calls by various self-styled anti-immigration groups demanding the removal of undocumented migrants.
In some communities, reports have emerged of door-to-door inspections, intimidation campaigns, and vigilante-style efforts to identify and expel foreign nationals.
Human rights organisations have raised concerns that such actions increasingly blur the distinction between lawful immigration enforcement and mob violence.
Before rushing to moral judgment, however, we should acknowledge an uncomfortable truth.
Many South Africans are angry.
They are angry about unemployment. Angry about poverty.
Angry about collapsing infrastructure.
Angry about corruption.
Angry about feeling abandoned by institutions that seem incapable of delivering safety, jobs or dignity.
SA’s socioeconomic challenges are real and severe. The frustration is understandable.
Yet understandable frustration does not automatically produce correct conclusions.
History repeatedly shows that societies under pressure seek convenient explanations for complex problems.
Foreigners often become the easiest target because they are visible, vulnerable and politically expendable.
Throughout the world, migrants have been blamed for crime, unemployment and strained public services, whether evidence supports those claims or not.
SA is hardly unique in this regard.
The irony is that SA’s own democratic birth depended heavily on the generosity of foreigners.
During apartheid, many African states did not merely issue statements of solidarity. They carried tangible burdens.
Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana and other frontline states provided sanctuary, training facilities, diplomatic support and strategic assistance to SA liberation movements.
Their economies and people paid a price for standing alongside a country that was itself internationally isolated.
One wonders whether some of today’s anti-immigrant activists would have passed the same tests they now impose on others.
Would they have welcomed young South African exiles crossing borders in search of refuge from apartheid?
Would they have questioned whether those exiles were “taking jobs” from local citizens?
Would they have insisted that liberation fighters produce perfect documentation before receiving sanctuary?
History often becomes uncomfortable when applied consistently.
This does not mean SA must abandon immigration controls.
Every sovereign nation has the right and responsibility to regulate migration and protect its borders. No serious observer disputes that.
The real issue is whether ordinary citizens should assume powers that belong to the state.
When community groups conduct patrols, determine who belongs and who does not, and effectively perform immigration enforcement functions, they reveal something deeper than hostility towards foreigners.
They reveal a profound lack of confidence in government institutions.
In that sense, the rise of vigilante anti-immigrant campaigns may be less an immigration story than a governance story.
Citizens generally do not take the law into their own hands when they trust that the law is working.
The tragedy is that this dynamic places SA in direct contradiction with one of its most celebrated national myths: the Rainbow Nation.
The phrase has often been dismissed as naïve idealism. Yet beneath the slogan is a profound ethical proposition.
SA would become a place where difference did not determine human worth.
It was an aspiration championed by figures such as our first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, leaders whose moral authority earned global admiration and Nobel recognition.
The promise was not merely racial reconciliation. It was human dignity. It was constitutionalism. It was ubuntu.
Xenophobic violence weakens that promise. It also weakens SA’s geopolitical standing.
A country cannot credibly champion African unity in Addis Ababa, advocate human rights in Geneva, and promote continental integration through the AU while African nationals fear harassment within its own borders.
Repeated xenophobic incidents have strained diplomatic relations with fellow African countries and attracted criticism from international observers who question SA’s commitment to the ideals it often espouses globally.
The consequences extend beyond diplomacy.
Leadership rests as much on moral influence as on economic power.
SA’s greatest export since 1994 has not been minerals, finance or manufacturing. It has been an idea: that a deeply divided society could choose reconciliation over revenge and constitutionalism over chaos.
That idea remains valuable. But ideas require maintenance.
Mbeki’s speech contains a passage that feels remarkably prophetic today.
Reflecting on the destruction of the Khoi and San, he warned against forgetting historical injustices because memory should teach us “not and never to be inhuman again”.
Perhaps therein lies the challenge.
South Africans are justified in demanding jobs.
They are justified in demanding effective border management.
They are justified in expecting government to address crime and service delivery failures.
What they are not justified in doing is confusing migrants with the causes of those failures.
If “I Am an African” was the moral vision of 1996, then contemporary SA must decide whether being African is merely a matter of geography, or whether it carries obligations of solidarity, memory and humanity.
The answer will determine not only how migrants are treated.
It may determine what kind of nation SA ultimately becomes.
Prof Sanjay Balkaran, PhD in public administration; executive dean, faculty of management and public administration sciences at iYunivesithi Walter Sisulu. He writes in his personal capacity
