View / South Africa faces security test as anti-migrant violence escalates

South Africa on Tuesday faces a major test for a state already stretched and carrying the scars of violence from years prior.

New civic movements working alongside established anti-migrant vigilante groups are demanding the removal of undocumented migrants and tighter border enforcement, setting their own deadline of June 30. Large protests are expected and, in a country where migration has become an easy target for people suffering from a cascade of social and economic ills, the gatherings risk becoming combustible.

The protests come against a grim backdrop of social pressures: Unemployment is entrenched, inequality is widening, and municipal services are unreliable. These conditions make any protest harder to manage because they inflame public resentment. Add to these factors a presidency distracted by leadership battles and impeachment proceedings, and you get a government struggling to project authority at the exact moment the country needs it most.

The memory of July 2021 protests sits in the background. Demonstrations sparked by the arrest of the former president descended into looting and torching of trucks in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng— sub-Saharan Africa’s largest shipping terminal and the national economic hub, respectively — leaving more than 300 people dead and billions of dollars in assets destroyed.

The trauma changed how the country thinks about risk. Malls reinforced their security battalions, landlords fortified buildings to make them tough to burgle or damage, and logistics operators learned to treat highways as a potentially risky territory. Maintaining public order became a permanent security burden carried by businesses, landlords, and ordinary citizens.

Pretoria has since rolled out a 600 million rand ($35 million) security plan, complete with joint command centers and official briefings. Tuesday will show whether that plan will work, as Pretoria is confident it will, or whether South Africa must grapple with a new reality, one in which stability has become a community-funded expense, paid for by people least able to carry it.