Across South Africa’s political stage, movements such as Operation Dudula and leaders like Gayton McKenzie have made anti-migrant rhetoric a campaign weapon. Their speeches link unemployment, crime, and collapsing public services to the presence of Zimbabwean and other African migrants.
The slogans are emotionally charged and electorally effective, but they are also factually hollow.
South Africa’s socio-economic crises are real: record joblessness, strained infrastructure, and municipal mismanagement. Yet blaming migrants for these structural failures distracts from the real causes such as corruption, weak governance, and decades of unequal development. The data tell a far different story.
Zimbabweans are taking South African jobs
According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (Q1 2024), foreign-born workers make up roughly 4-5 percent of total employment. Most are concentrated in sectors that locals avoid. These include domestic work, construction, security, and agriculture where wages are low and labour conditions harsh.
A Wits University Migration Lab study (2023) found that migrant participation actually creates complementary employment.
Cross-border traders, small-scale manufacturers, and informal vendors generate demand for local goods, transport, and housing.
Far from “stealing jobs,” migrants expand markets. The real enemy of employment remains stagnant investment and skills mismatch, not Zimbabwean hawkers.
Foreigners cause high crime
This myth thrives because crime feels personal and visible. Yet evidence from the South African Police Service (SAPS 2023) and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS 2023) consistently shows that non-citizens account for under 8 percent of convicted offenders nationwide.
Crime correlates far more strongly with poverty, inequality, and local gang networks than with nationality.
By broadcasting sensational anecdotes, anti-migrant movements erase the broader picture: migrants are disproportionately victims, not perpetrators, of crime. Spaza-shop robberies, extortion, and assaults often target foreign entrepreneurs precisely because they operate in vulnerable informal markets with little police protection.
Migrants drain healthcare and housing
In reality, migrants both contribute financially and use public services at low rates. The Health Systems Trust Annual Review (2022) found that non-nationals made up less than 6 percent of total public-clinic visits. Most Zimbabweans rely on private or community facilities and pay out-of-pocket.
Through everyday consumption, migrants pay Value-Added Tax on all goods and services. Many rent accommodation from South African landlords, indirectly supporting municipal rates. The “free-rider” story ignores these fiscal contributions.
The health-care crisis is a function of systemic under-funding and mismanagement, problems that pre-date large-scale migration.
Undocumented migrants don’t pay tax
Even the undocumented cannot avoid taxation. Every purchase contributes VAT; many migrants with legal permits are registered employees who pay PAYE and contribute to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF).
The National Treasury’s Tax Statistics (2023) confirm that tens of thousands of foreign workers appear in PAYE filings each year.
Moreover, migrant-owned businesses buy local stock, employ South Africans, and pay municipal levies.
If anything, bureaucratic red tape and slow visa processing prevent fuller compliance, denying the state even more potential revenue.
Removing foreigners will reduce unemployment
The South African Labour and Development Research Unit (2022) modelled the economic effects of mass deportation and found that it would shrink GDP by 1–2 percent and destroy about 200 000 local jobs.
Why?
Migrants sustain consumer demand and supply chains. Removing them would reduce spending in township economies, collapse informal retail networks, and lower tax receipts.
This is not theoretical. During the 2008 and 2015 xenophobic attacks, several townships saw local food prices spike and employment dip as migrant-run shops closed.
Deportation populism thus undermines the very livelihoods it claims to protect.
Zimbabweans overstay because they want free services
The reality is humanitarian, not opportunistic. The International Organization for Migration (IOM Southern Africa Report 2024) identifies economic collapse, currency instability, and slow visa processing as the main drivers of prolonged stays.
Zimbabweans who left after 2000’s farm seizures and 2008’s hyper-inflation continue to send remittances exceeding US$1 billion annually, supporting families and stabilising their home economy.
Far from draining South Africa, this remittance flow reduces regional poverty and helps maintain demand for South African exports in Zimbabwean markets.
Migration thus functions as an informal safety-valve for the region’s interconnected economies.
Historical and economic interdependence
Former President Thabo Mbeki’s speech at Robert Mugabe’s memorial (2019) offered a moral lens on this interdependence. He recalled how “without Zimbabwe’s solidarity, there would be no free South Africa.”
Zimbabwe sheltered ANC cadres, trained fighters, and provided diplomatic backing when few dared.
The post-liberation economies remain intertwined. Zimbabwe imports South African fuel, machinery, and manufactured goods. South Africa depends on Zimbabwean agricultural produce and migrant labour.
Both share electricity infrastructure through the Southern African Power Pool.
A politics that pits these nations against each other undermines regional stability and SADC’s integration agenda. Mbeki warned that losing moral leadership in favour of populist scapegoating would “betray the sacrifices of liberation.”
His caution resonates directly against today’s Dudula narrative.
Mbeki’s Pan-African vision remains relevant: African prosperity is collective or it is fragile. Turning neighbours into enemies cannot build the nation; it only isolates it.
The myths propagated by Operation Dudula and Gayton McKenzie collapse under scrutiny. Migrants are neither job thieves nor criminals; they are co-participants in South Africa’s complex economy and heirs to a shared liberation history. Facts, not fear, should guide the national conversation.
As Thabo Mbeki reminded us, “We are one people, with one destiny.” Re-embracing that truth is the surest defence against the politics of division, and the first step toward genuine renewal across the Limpopo.
