Afrophobia is not Ubuntu
Zimrights Statement Condemning
Anti-african Attacks in South Africa
ZimRights has been tracking the deteriorating situation in South Africa since April 2026, when anti-immigration groups, principally the March and March and Operation Dudula, began organising marches and so-called “enforcement” operations against foreign nationals in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban. What followed was not protest. It was violence. Shops were looted and burned. Families were driven from their homes. In Cleveland, Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on an informal settlement on 10 June 2026. In Mossel Bay, over fifty homes were set alight and Mozambique confirmed five of its nationals killed. In Pietermaritzburg, hundreds of Malawians, including women and children, camped outdoors in the middle of winter after fleeing their homes. By 27 June 2026, hundreds of Zimbabweans had gathered outside the Zimbabwean Consulate in Cape Town seeking to be sent home. This is not a migration management problem but it is a human rights crisis!
To the Government of South Africa
Zimbabweans are the largest single foreign-born community in your country. Conservative estimates put the number at 1.5 million; broader estimates, factoring in undocumented migrants, range between two and three million (World Population Clock, 2026) Zimbabweans in South Africa. These are people who have worked in your mines, raised your children, staffed your hospitals, and built your houses for decades. Many have lived there longer than some of their attackers have been alive. South Africa’s Constitution protects the rights of all persons within its borders, not only citizens. The country is further bound by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Articles 3, 4, 5, 12, 14 and 28) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which impose a clear duty to protect all persons from mob violence and ethnic targeting. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights said as much in its statement of 27 April 2026. We call on the South African government to deploy police and security resources to protect foreign nationals, prosecute those responsible for attacks, formally repudiate the June 30 “deadline” issued by vigilante groups, and stop treating the protection of migrants as a political liability.
To the Government of Zimbabwe
Zimbabweans do not cross the Limpopo River at night because South Africa is inviting. They do it because Zimbabwe has not given them a reason to stay. During the 2025/2026 border season alone, South African authorities intercepted nearly 5,370 Zimbabweans attempting illegal entry (South African Border Management Authority, 2026). That number does not reflect recklessness. It reflects desperation.
We call on the Zimbabwean government to use every available diplomatic channel to secure the safety of nationals currently at risk in South Africa; to facilitate and fund the dignified return of those who wish to come home; and to be honest about what is driving people out. ZimRights’s People’s Human Rights Manifesto (2023) documents exactly what people said they needed to stay and build their lives at home. Ask 6 demands that the government protect and promote livelihoods: create jobs, ensure workers earn a living wage, and remove obstacles to lawful economic activity. Ask 8 calls for the exercise of freedoms without fear of arrest or persecution. Ask 9 demands an end to corruption and the abuse of public office. Ask 10 holds elected officials to account throughout their tenure, not just at election time. The government has had those findings since 2023. Zimbabweans will stop crossing that river when the government starts treating the Manifesto as a set of obligations, not a document to shelve.
On ubuntu, Pan-Africanism, and what Africa owes itself. The ANC ran its liberation movement from Lusaka and Harare. ZANU-PF guerrillas trained in Tanzania and Mozambique. FRELIMO crossed into Zimbabwe. SWAPO found shelter across the region. Southern African liberation was a shared project, and the people now being attacked in South African townships are the children and grandchildren of the communities that made that project possible. Ubuntu, the understanding that personhood is bound up in community, cannot be selectively applied. Ubuntu cannot mean “I am because we are” when it suits, and “mabahambe” when it does not! The legal architecture of the continent reflects this. The Constitutive Act of the African Union (Article 4) prohibits discrimination against nationals of AU member states. The OAU Refugee Convention (1969) and the Kampala Convention protect people displaced by conflict and violence. The SADC Treaty commits member states to the promotion of human rights and regional solidarity. These are not aspirational texts. They are binding commitments. The AU and SADC must say so, loudly, now.
What is happening in South Africa has a name: it is Afrophobia. Afrophobia is violence directed at Africans by other Africans, justified by economic grievance but fuelled by the same scapegoating logic that has driven persecutions throughout history. The colonial borders that cut across our communities were not drawn with our consent. We will not allow them to become the basis for deciding who is human and who is not. ZimRights calls on all people of conscience, in South Africa and across the continent, to reject this.
Issued by
Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights)
Information Department
Website: www.zimrights.org.zw
