South Africa's Xenophobia: Focusing on The Wrong Enemy

In this report, The Spearhead’s McKay Chukwu examines how public anger in South Africa is often directed at African migrants instead of the deeper economic structures driving inequality in the country.

Using recent controversies involving Nigerians in South Africa, the piece shows how frustration is quickly turned toward foreigners while the legacy of apartheid, land dispossession, and the concentration of wealth remain largely untouched.

Xenophobia is a distraction from the real sources of hardship for many Black South Africans, leaving Africans divided against one another while the systems that benefit from that division stay firmly in place.