Workers and the poor must unite — our enemy is not each other

We stand firmly against the rising wave of xenophobic violence and intimidation being directed solely at migrants of African origin in our communities. We reject it in all its forms, and we name it for what it is: a deliberate political project designed to serve the interests of a small but ambitious and narrow nationalist class.

The organisations driving this campaign, among them Operation Dudula, the MK Party, ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance, and their allies, present themselves as champions of the poor. They are not. They are the representatives of aspirant middle-class elements who have long coveted the township retail economy and resent those who built it. Unable to compete on merit, they seek to capture it through intimidation, displacement, and manufactured rage.

Make no mistake, the suffering that fuels this movement is real. Unemployment is devastating. Public services are collapsing. Healthcare, housing, water, electricity, a state that was supposed to serve the people has been hollowed out by corruption, mismanagement, and deliberate privatisation. That anger is legitimate. But it is being stolen. It is being redirected, away from the ruling elites and the state that have failed us, and toward the most vulnerable, fellow workers, fellow poor people, who happen to have been born across a border.

The instigators of xenophobia are not motivated by solidarity. They are motivated by hunger, hunger for profit, for political power, for a slice of an economy they wish to monopolise. They are using the bodies and the fury of the most desperate among us as instruments for their own advancement.

We say: enough!

The real authors of our oppression are not Zimbabwean spaza shop owners or Mozambican street traders. They are the political elite who have looted public institutions. They are the corporations that have captured the state. They are the financiers of austerity who demand budget cuts in health, education, and housing to protect the wealthy from contributing their fair share.

Our fight is against budget cuts that strip communities of services. Our fight is against privatisation that puts profit before people. Our fight is for the radical redistribution of wealth, land, resources, and economic power to those who have always been denied it.

We call on workers, the unemployed, communities, and all progressive forces to refuse the poison of xenophobia. Do not allow your legitimate anger to be weaponised against your neighbours. Turn it where it belongs, toward those who hold power, hoard wealth, and govern in contempt of the poor.

An injury to one is an injury to all. The poor have no nation — only each other.

No to xenophobia! 

No to austerity! 

No to privatisation!

Yes to working-class unity!