Keypoints:
- Mbeki says migrants are being scapegoated for economic decline
- Former president links xenophobia to collapse of Pan-African solidarity
- Speech revives debate over South Africa’s post-apartheid identity
FORMER South African president Thabo Mbeki has inserted himself directly into one of the country’s most volatile political debates: xenophobia, migration and economic decline.
Speaking during a high-level business breakfast hosted by the Thabo Mbeki Foundation in collaboration with AUDA-NEPAD in Cape Town on May 23, Mbeki delivered a sweeping critique of South Africa’s post-apartheid trajectory, warning that foreign Africans are being unfairly blamed for structural failures created by political and economic elites.
Mbeki’s remarks come amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, where foreign nationals are increasingly blamed for unemployment, crime and pressure on public services despite deeper structural economic problems. The issue has become politically explosive as the country battles stagnant growth, weak infrastructure, rolling blackouts and high youth unemployment.
Central to Mbeki’s argument was the claim that South Africa’s economic deterioration long predates the current migration debate.
He pointed to what he described as a dramatic reversal in South Africa’s economic trajectory after 2009, noting that the country achieved growth rates of around 6 percent during the earlier democratic period before entering a prolonged slowdown.
‘We know the history in detail of how South Africa from 1994 to 2008, 2009, the country goes up like this. Growth rates reach 6 percent. From 2009 it goes the opposite direction,’ Mbeki said.
He insisted that undocumented African migrants were not responsible for that decline.
‘The people who caused that decline are laughing in the corner because you are pointing not at them but somewhere else,’ he added.
His intervention arrives at a moment of heightened continental concern over xenophobia in South Africa. Earlier this month, Ghana urged the African Union to confront xenophobic tensions in South Africa, reflecting growing diplomatic anxiety over attacks and anti-migrant rhetoric.
Liberation memories and a changing South Africa
Much of Mbeki’s speech relied not on statistics or policy prescriptions, but on stories.
Again and again, he returned to memories from the liberation struggle to illustrate what he believes South Africa has forgotten about its relationship with the rest of Africa.
He recalled how Zambia gave ANC cadres extraordinary freedom and protection during apartheid, including one operative known by the pseudonym ‘Oshkosh’, who worked freely around Lusaka International Airport because Zambian authorities trusted the ANC implicitly.
Mbeki recounted how Zambian police later discovered that the operative had become involved in drug trafficking. Yet instead of publicly humiliating the ANC, the authorities privately warned South African officials and quietly urged them to remove him from Zambia before arrests were made.
For Mbeki, the anecdote illustrated the depth of political solidarity African states once extended to the anti-apartheid struggle.
Another story focused on Tanzania and the death of former prime minister Edward Sokoine, who was killed in a collision involving ANC-linked personnel during the exile years.
Mbeki said ANC members feared the tragedy could trigger public anger against South Africans living in Tanzania because Sokoine was deeply respected nationally. Instead, he said Tanzanian authorities handled the matter with restraint and sensitivity, avoiding any wider backlash against South African exiles.
‘I’m talking about a particular kind of relationship that we had with the rest of the continent,’ Mbeki told the audience.
The former president also recalled how Guinea under former leader Ahmed Sékou Touré incorporated the South African liberation struggle into school curricula, teaching students about apartheid, the ANC and the wider struggle for liberation.
During a later visit to Guinea after South Africa’s democratic transition, Mbeki said Guinean officials complained that post-apartheid South African leaders routinely ‘overflew’ Conakry while visiting other African capitals, despite Guinea’s longstanding solidarity during apartheid.
He added another anecdote involving former South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was reportedly given jewellery for free by a Guinean shopkeeper simply because she represented South Africa.
‘This is for us, from the people of Guinea,’ the shopkeeper reportedly told her.
The stories formed the emotional core of Mbeki’s argument: that today’s xenophobia represents not simply social frustration, but a rupture with the continental solidarity that helped dismantle apartheid itself.
From Pan-Africanism to political retreat
The speech revived themes central to Mbeki’s presidency, particularly his vision of an ‘African Renaissance’ built on deeper political and economic integration across the continent.
But he warned that this pan-African consciousness has weakened sharply over the past two decades.
Mbeki described what he called a ‘regression’ in African integration thinking both inside South Africa and across the continent, suggesting that the country is losing the continental outlook that once defined its democratic transition.
That criticism also extended to the corporate sector. He criticised the poor representation of major South African firms at a recent continental business gathering in Rwanda led by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, saying it reflected declining commitment to African integration itself.
He also revisited behind-the-scenes diplomatic interventions involving African leaders including former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and former Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa.
Mbeki recalled warning Obasanjo ahead of Nigeria’s 2003 elections that dissatisfaction among Nigerians could threaten his second term. According to Mbeki, African leaders quietly intervened to preserve Obasanjo’s leadership because they feared losing an influential continental figure.
He also described how regional leaders united to stop former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba from pursuing a third presidential term, eventually dispatching Mwanawasa to confront Chiluba directly because he possessed the ‘moral authority’ to do so.
For Mbeki, these episodes reflected an earlier generation of African political leadership deeply invested in regional norms, collective accountability and continental cohesion.
Xenophobia as political diversion
Mbeki’s most politically sensitive argument was that migrants are being used as scapegoats for deeper economic failures.
South Africa’s unemployment rate remains among the highest globally, especially among young people. Economic growth has stagnated for more than a decade, while corruption scandals, state capture, electricity shortages and institutional decline continue to fuel public frustration.
He maintained that undocumented African migrants are politically convenient targets because they are visible and vulnerable.
That position directly challenges increasingly popular narratives within South African politics that portray migrants as drivers of crime, job losses and collapsing public services.
His remarks also exposed a deeper contradiction within South Africa’s post-apartheid identity: the same country that once depended heavily on continental solidarity is increasingly turning against Africans seeking opportunity within its borders.
The tensions have become increasingly visible in recent years. Anti-migrant campaigns, inflammatory rhetoric and sporadic outbreaks of violence have intensified across several urban centres.
South African courts have also intervened. In one recent case, a South African court rebuked authorities over xenophobic treatment at public clinics, highlighting growing concerns over discrimination against foreign nationals.
Critics of Mbeki’s position argue that migration pressures are genuine, particularly in poorer communities already struggling with overstretched housing, healthcare and informal employment markets.
But his broader argument was about accountability.
He suggested that public anger directed toward migrants is obscuring the deeper failures of governance, economic management and state leadership that have contributed to South Africa’s long economic stagnation.
That argument also resonates with wider concerns inside the country itself. Earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged the scale of institutional decline facing the country. Ramaphosa admitted South Africa was ‘broken’, reinforcing growing public frustration over failing institutions and economic deterioration.
A warning about South Africa’s future
Perhaps the most striking element of Mbeki’s speech was his prediction that Africans will continue coming to South Africa regardless of hostility.
For Mbeki, migration is inseparable from the shared liberation history that many Africans still associate with South Africa.
He insisted that this historical connection cannot easily be erased by anti-immigrant rhetoric or political hostility.
The warning embedded in his speech is that South Africa risks isolating itself from the very continent that once defended it diplomatically, politically and materially during apartheid.
At a time when Africa is pushing for deeper regional integration through initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, Mbeki appears increasingly concerned that South Africa is moving psychologically in the opposite direction — inward, defensive and suspicious of African solidarity itself.
His Cape Town address therefore was not simply about xenophobia.
It was a warning that South Africa may be abandoning the pan-African vision that once defined its democratic identity.
Related stories
