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The inconvenient truth is that none of SA’s economic woes can be pinned on immigrants, documented or not. Picture: Chris J Ratcliffe
The inconvenient truth is that none of SA’s economic woes can be pinned on immigrants, documented or not. Picture: Chris J Ratcliffe

When in doubt, blame the foreigners. It worked for Donald Trump in his successful bid for the US presidency, and it’s working just fine for SA politicians eager to distract from their own failures. 

All you need to do is take a struggling economy, throw in a few national identity crises, add in some populist grandstanding, and you’ve got yourself a fine scapegoat. Immigrants, especially the undocumented ones, are now the plug-in explanation for everything from unemployment to crumbling infrastructure and failing healthcare. 

Across the Atlantic Trump and his disciples mastered this craft. “Build the wall!” became more than a slogan — it’s a movement, a rallying cry for what Hillary Clinton called “a basket of deplorables”, convinced that America’s problems could be solved by keeping out desperate people fleeing worse situations.

Now, executive orders flow freely. The latest masterpiece? Trying to scrap birthright citizenship, because nothing says “land of the free” like rewriting the constitution to banish babies from the “home of the brave”. 

The result? An America where immigrants — especially those who happen to have the wrong skin tone — are automatically assumed to be criminals and freeloaders. That the economy depends on immigrant labour? Irrelevant. That most violent crime is committed by native-born citizens? Inconvenient.

SA politicians have not been tardy in taking a page from the global populist playbook. The scapegoat of choice isn’t just any immigrant — it’s the “illegal” foreigner, the faceless menace allegedly plundering resources and stealing jobs.

This brings us to the saga of illegal mining, the latest excuse for a xenophobic free-for-all. In the abandoned shafts of mining ghost towns in the North West province we had thousands of miners — most of them undocumented immigrants — trapped underground, starving and, according to reports, resorting to cannibalism.

What did our esteemed leadership propose? Sending help? Rescue? Involve the community? Of course not. Minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni demanded that they be “smoked out.” Because nothing screams good governance like leaving desperate people to die in a hole. 

Meanwhile, mineral & petroleum resources minister Gwede Mantashe, never one to let a populist opportunity go to waste, labelled the miners “economic saboteurs”. A curious accusation considering the real economic sabotage has been happening in boardrooms and government contracts for decades. But why confront systemic failure when you can blame foreigners? 

Nothing new here; remember Idi Amin? Distract the public with an “enemy” while dodging accountability. The more dire the crisis — crime, poverty, unemployment — the louder the anti-immigrant rhetoric. The inconvenient truth is that none of SA’s economic woes can be pinned on immigrants, documented or not. The housing crisis? A result of decades of poor planning and corruption. The unemployment rate? A casualty of economic mismanagement. Crumbling infrastructure? A direct consequence of looting on a grand scale. 

But pointing fingers at immigrants is easier than admitting failure. It’s also more effective. People love a simple narrative, and “foreigners are the problem” is far easier to digest than “we’ve systematically mismanaged the country for years”. 

If you thought this was just an SA or American problem, think again. Ask Elon Musk, whose platform, X (known as Twitter before he had a branding epiphany) has become a global breeding ground for misinformation and hysteria masquerading as “free speech”. Whether it’s election fraud conspiracies, transphobic tirades or good, old-fashioned immigrant bashing. Musk’s free speech crusade has turned his social media empire into a safe space for the world’s most unhinged ideas. 

But back at the ranch, sitting on sofas stuffed with dollars, President Cyril Ramaphosa might ask himself at what point democracy becomes a hollow shell of itself. When a government scapegoats its most vulnerable instead of protecting them? When populist fearmongering replaces fact-based policy? When leaders openly dismiss humanitarian crises because they involve the “wrong” kind of people?

When profit trumps the struggles of ordinary folk, I remember Marikana. 

• Cachalia is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson.

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