Is South Africa, and Cape Town, Xenophobic?

First, what do we mean?

Xenophobia is a simple idea: fear or dislike of people seen as foreign. In South Africa the word comes up a lot, because attacks on migrants happen often and sometimes turn deadly. But the word can hide as much as it reveals, so it helps to be precise.

The first thing to notice is who gets hurt. The hostility does not fall evenly on all foreigners. A German tourist, a British retiree or a wealthy expat is almost never a target. The people who are attacked are poorer Black African migrants, and some Asian migrants, who live and work in low-income neighbourhoods. Because the anger lands mostly on fellow Africans, many scholars argue the honest word is Afrophobia, not xenophobia. It is, as one writer put it, Africa turning on itself.

What the numbers say

The most careful count comes from Xenowatch, a project of the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University in Johannesburg. It has tracked these attacks for years, and the totals are sobering.

Two things stand out. First, this is not a one-off. There has been at least some xenophobic violence every single year since 1994, the year apartheid ended. Second, it comes in waves. The worst was in May 2008, when more than 60 people were killed in two weeks. Smaller waves followed in 2015, in 2019, and again from 2021. The current wave, around the 30 June 2026 "deadline" set by anti-immigration groups, is the latest.

The recent trend is upward. After a quieter 2023, recorded incidents climbed to a high in 2025, and the first months of 2026 have already brought deadly attacks linked to anti-migrant protests.

Comparing the provinces

Here is where the easy story breaks down. Xenophobic violence is not spread evenly across South Africa. A few provinces carry most of it, and the rest see relatively little.

For years, Gauteng, the province around Johannesburg and Pretoria, was the clear centre. It is the country's biggest, busiest, most crowded region, and the place most migrants reach first. More recently, KwaZulu-Natal, around Durban, has matched or passed it. The Western Cape, which includes Cape Town, sits third, and has actually seen its share fall over the past few years.

But even "province" is too big a unit. Within these regions, the violence clusters in poor townships and informal settlements on the edges of the big cities, places like Alexandra, Diepsloot and Hillbrow in Johannesburg. These are exactly the areas where migrants and poor South Africans live closest together, competing for the same jobs, customers and scarce services. A leafy suburb a few kilometres away may never see any of it.

This matters for a fair answer. When people ask "is Cape Town xenophobic?", the truthful reply is that a few of its townships have seen serious incidents, including extortion rackets and deadly attacks, while most of the city goes about its day. The danger is concentrated, not citywide.

Comparing other countries

So how does South Africa look next to the rest of the world? The answer depends on whether you measure attitudes or violence, and the two do not line up neatly.

On attitudes, South Africa is unusually negative

When the respected pan-African survey Afrobarometer asked people across the continent about immigration, South Africa stood out. More than eight in ten South Africans, 83 percent, said the government should reduce or completely stop letting in foreign job seekers. That was the highest level of any of the 38 African countries surveyed. On opinion alone, South Africa is near the top of the table.

And yet opinion is a slippery measure. Globally, Gallup's Migrant Acceptance Index puts the world average at about 5.3 out of 9, with Canada near 8.5 at the top and Hungary near 1.7 at the bottom. Interestingly, sub-Saharan Africa as a region scores relatively warmly on personally accepting migrants as neighbours or in-laws. South Africa, then, is a country of contradictions: hard policy attitudes sit beside everyday lives in which millions of South Africans and migrants share streets, schools and churches without trouble.

On violence, the comparison is harsher, but not unique

Where South Africa truly stands out is the recurring, organised and largely unpunished violence. Many countries have angry immigration politics; fewer see mobs burn homes and chase families out of whole neighbourhoods on a regular basis. Critics say this is why President Ramaphosa's description of the "xenophobic" label as "lazy" rings hollow: the denial, they argue, is contradicted by the frequency, scale and impunity of the attacks.

It would be wrong, though, to treat this as a uniquely South African evil. Mass expulsions of African migrants have happened across the continent. Ghana forced out around 200,000 Nigerians in 1969. Nigeria expelled some two million migrants, more than half of them Ghanaian, in 1983. In Cote d'Ivoire, a citizenship doctrine built to exclude "foreigners" helped tip the country into civil war. And anti-migrant politics, sometimes violent, runs through Europe, the United States and India today. South Africa's problem is serious and distinctive, but it sits inside a global pattern, not outside it.

Why does it happen?

If South Africans are not naturally more hateful than anyone else, why does this keep happening here? Researchers point to a few overlapping reasons, and it helps to take them in turn.

There is one more finding that is easy to miss but very important. Poverty and unemployment exist almost everywhere in South Africa. So they cannot, on their own, explain why an attack erupts in one township and not in the very similar one next door. The researchers who study this closely, at Wits University, conclude that the missing ingredient is usually local: a leader, a group or a grievance that turns ordinary hardship into organised violence. That is hopeful in a way, because it means the violence is made by people and choices, and can be unmade the same way.

The other side of the story

It would be unfair, and inaccurate, to end on the violence alone. Two things are true at once.

The first is that most migrants are safe most of the time. Millions of foreign nationals live, work and raise families in South Africa without being attacked. They run shops, nurse patients, build houses and teach children. The headlines capture the worst days, not the ordinary ones.

The second is that South Africa also has a strong tradition of solidarity, and a loud one. The same country that produces the attacks also produces fierce resistance to them. Grassroots movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack-dwellers' movement, have physically defended migrants in poor communities. Faith groups and aid organisations such as Gift of the Givers feed and shelter the displaced. Some political parties mount counter-marches against the anti-immigration ones. And the courts have stepped in, ruling in late 2025 that vigilante groups may not block migrants from clinics.

This matters because the apartheid struggle was won partly through the solidarity of the rest of Africa. Many South Africans feel that history keenly, and reject the idea of turning on the neighbours who once gave them shelter. The fight over xenophobia is, in part, a fight between two versions of South Africa.

So, is it xenophobic?

Here is a fair summing-up.

Yes, in the sense that matters most: South Africa has a real, recurring and serious problem of violence against African migrants, attitudes that poll among the most anti-immigration in Africa, and a state that too often fails to prevent or punish the attacks. Pretending otherwise does not help anyone, least of all the people in danger.

But not in the lazy sense the word is often used. South Africans are not uniquely cruel, the country is not uniformly hostile, most migrants live in peace, the violence is concentrated in specific poor places, and powerful movements of ordinary South Africans fight it every day. The problem is driven by inequality, failed governance and political blame, not by something fixed in the national character.

For a visitor, that means Cape Town and South Africa remain welcoming and safe to travel in, with sensible care around flashpoints. For the country itself, it means the problem is human-made, and therefore solvable, if the deeper causes of poverty and weak governance are addressed, and if the law is applied fairly to protect everyone within its borders.

Common questions