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A South African Identity Crisis

Anti-immigrant activism reveals the contradictions of a country that projects itself as a bastion of human rights.

Listen · 11:12 min

By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer

I’m the editor of The World.

July 26, 2026, 4:59 p.m. ET

Katrin is away this week, so I’ll be hosting the newsletter. Today’s is about the increasingly scary climate for immigrants in South Africa.

A few months ago, amid concerns about anti-immigrant violence, Ghana chartered a flight to repatriate 300 of its citizens from South Africa. It was an “extraordinary move,” John Eligon, our Johannesburg bureau chief, wrote at the time — but other countries soon followed suit. In the weeks since, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda have also organized repatriation efforts.

This isn’t the first time that South Africa has been rocked by xenophobic violence. But it seems different this time around. The anti-immigrant activists are more organized; the pushback from other African countries has been fiercer. Today, John writes about how the latest protests have led to an identity crisis in South Africa.

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‘You can go back to your country’

As part of my reporting on anti-immigrant activists, I recently tagged along with a group of South Africans who were going to raid a house that they believed had been illegally occupied by undocumented foreigners.

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