Addressing Immigration In SA Through An Ubuntu Anchored Social Justice Lens 

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One of the most divisive issues in a world gripped by fear and hate, as inequality, poverty and hunger rise globally, is the issue of migration.

Like most relatively developed, particularly industrialised countries, South Africa is currently gripped by anti-immigration protests, primarily targeting illegal immigration.

While there is no gainsaying the validity of the concern regarding the sharing of scarce resources already maldistributed due to colonialism and apartheid racist distributive policies, some of the pronouncements by leading figures have inspired hatred of foreigners.

This under the law, is xenophobia.  

In S v Makwanyane, the Constitutional Court proclaimed Ubuntu as central to the foundational value system we committed ourselves to uphold as we build a new society.

That new South Africa, the court clarified in cases such as Grootboom and Van Heerden, is one based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.

It is a society where every citizen’s quality of life is improved while every person’s potential is freed.

The implicit transformative governance injunction and prioritisation of citizens must be noted.

Based on the above, everything we do as a country, including confronting the migration challenge, has to incorporate an ubuntu-anchored social justice lens that centres the equal worth and human rights of all.

It must also factor the commitment to improve the quality of life of all citizens.

Ubuntu often reduced to “I am because we are,” is broader than that.

While ubuntu reminds us that our humanity is interconnected, it also, as Justice Langa outlined in Makwanyane, centralises the inviolable equal worth of every person.  

Ubuntu’s approach to distribution of public goods is one of balancing the needs of each person with those in a direct relational position with such person and those of society, the environment and future generations.

In Makwanyane, the Constitutional Court said Ubuntu incorporates considerations of social justice, equity and fairness.  

Ubuntu also places a reciprocal duty on each person to respect others and pull their weight for the common good.

When a person offends, Ubuntu’s approach is one of restorative justice, which incorporates reparation, restoration and reintegration.

This policy brief seeks to contribute to the policy discourse and statecraft capabilities that can help South Africa transcend its current immigration pressures and growing hate.

An Ubuntu Perspective on Immigration Pressures  

From an Ubuntu lens, the well-being of one community cannot be secured by diminishing another.

Yet neither can the dignity and aspirations of long-established residents be sacrificed on the altar of unchecked inflows.

South Africa’s post-1994 story is one of profound transition: from apartheid’s spatial and economic exclusions to a constitutional democracy that affirms human dignity for all.

Such transition remains incomplete, with apartheid disparities stark.

In this spirit, we must examine unplanned and undocumented immigration with honesty and without hate.

We need an evidence-based assessment of its measurable pressures on finite resources, economic opportunity, education, housing, water, and electricity, particularly where poor and working-class migrants concentrate in townships and border areas.

To view immigration properly, let us set aside broader governance failures except where they directly enable illicit documentation or the non-implementation of existing immigration laws.

The goal is not scapegoating but a clear-eyed assessment of the social justice or fair distributive impact of rapid and unregulated immigration.

Social justice, as envisaged by Luigi Taparelli on coining the concept in 1840-3, is essentially about the fair distribution of both the burdens and benefits of social existence and cooperation.

This requires statecraft that incorporates anticipatory social justice impact assessments of laws and policies.

The Centre for Social Justice has designed a Social Justice Impact Assessment Matrix(SIAM) for such.

We must admit that the distribution of the benefits and burdens of rapid unregulated immigration is uneven.

Statistics show that the majority of those who immigrate and end up in border villages, townships and informal settlements do so from a position of constrained choices mainly driven by social pathologies such as war, conflict and climate change.  

In South Africa, rapid, largely unplanned inflows since 1994 have added real strain on space and resources, especially in historically black and apartheid deprived areas.

According to Stats SA, foreign-born nationals (excluding children born in South Africa) have doubled, while the distribution is uneven.

Acknowledging this is not xenophobia.

Denying it while communities feel crowded out is disingenuous and ultimately corrosive to social cohesion.

Post-1994 Immigration Trends: Scale and Character

At the 1996 Census, foreign-born residents constituted approximately 2.1% of the population (roughly 958 000 people).

By the 2022 Census, this had more than doubled to 2.4m, accounting for 3.9% of the population.

This represents a substantial increase in absolute numbers within three decades, and it comes with a substantially increased government service delivery bill.

Most inflows originate from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), with significant numbers from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other neighbouring states.

A large proportion are economic migrants — often poor, working-age, and entering via porous border routes.

With regard to business opportunities, the majority who have displaced locals from informal trading spaces in township villages are mostly Somalis and Pakistanis.  

Official data includes both documented and undocumented in birthplace counts, but precise separation remains elusive  primarily because undocumented people are not easily detectable.

The distribution asymmetries are both provincial and along apartheid spatial disparities.

Provincially Gauteng houses one in two (50%) of quantified immigrants, while

Western Cape is a distant second, housing 16%.  

Concentrations are highest in metropolitan townships, informal settlements, and backyard dwellings, the spaces already carrying the heaviest legacy burdens from apartheid segregated spatial planning and dispossession.

Impacts on Scarce and Finite Resources and Socio-Economic Opportunities 1. Economic opportunities  

National labour market data shows foreign-born individuals often exhibit higher employment absorption rates than the average in certain metrics, filling roles in construction, domestic work, agriculture, and informal retail.

However, in townships and informal economies, the visible shift in spaza shop ownership (frequently foreign dominated in sampled areas) and competition for day labour and micro-enterprises create direct displacement pressures on local economies that relatively thrived during apartheid.

Poor and undocumented migrants, by necessity, cluster in the lowest rungs of the informal economy.

This is not conspiracy but arithmetic: when supply of low-skilled labour rises rapidly in spatially concentrated pockets while job creation lags, competition intensifies.

The result is not abstract “national strain” but tangible frustration in communities where unemployment was already structurally high and businesses struggling as big business enters townships compounded by COVID-19 regulations.

2. Education opportunities Nationally, foreign national learners constituted about 1.8% of public-school enrolment in 2025 (roughly 254,000 learners).

This figure appears modest.

Yet in high-inflow districts of Gauteng and the Western Cape, individual schools and circuits experience far higher local percentages, leading to heightened space competition, overcrowded classrooms, stretched teacher-pupil ratios, and pressure on already limited infrastructure.

The constitutional right to basic education for all children collides with finite classroom space and budgets in specific locales.

3. Access to housing

Though South Africa’s housing backlog predates recent migration spikes, rooted in apartheid spatial engineering and corruption plus inefficiencies in post-1994 delivery, it has been exacerbated by rapid and unplanned inflows.

Unplanned inflows accelerate demand in already stressed metros. Immigrant households (both internal South African and international) show higher rates of residence in informal dwellings and backyard shacks.

Townships and informal settlements absorb much of this pressure, intensifying competition for limited formal housing stock and upgrading programmes.

Finite land and construction capacity mean rapid population additions in concentrated zones translate into longer queues and heightened density.

4. Water, electricity and health services

These are the most visibly finite resources. Informal settlements and backyard dwellings, frequently rely on shared or illegal connections.

Rapid household formation in these areas outpaces infrastructure upgrades, contributing to load-shedding amplification, water shedding risks and sanitation strain.

While national per-capita figures may dilute the effect, the lived reality in high-density townships and border towns is one of more people sharing the same taps, transformers, and sewage systems.

Urban planning principles everywhere recognise that infrastructure must be sequenced with anticipated population growth; unplanned surges disrupt that sequencing.

In short, the doubling (in share and absolute terms) of mostly poor economic migrants since 1994 has not collapsed the national but it has added measurable, spatially concentrated demand on resources that were already under pressure.

Townships and certain border areas bear a disproportionate share because that is where networks, jobs in the informal sector, and affordable (if inadequate) shelter cluster.  

It is also common cause that public health services in boarder towns and townships experiencing an inflow of unregulated immigrants, limited hospital resources are stretched.

While it is true that affluent immigrants use private health services, many cannot afford such.

Porous Borders, Undocumented Status, and Crime Linkages

Countries have both a sovereign right and a practical duty to regulate entry in line with capacity and security.

As the Department of Home Affairs repeatedly said during consultations on its White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, porous borders and implementation gaps in existing immigration and border laws have enabled not only economic migration but also transnational criminal flows.

Drug trafficking and human trafficking routes exploit weak enforcement, the distributive burden of which tends to be disproportionate on women and children.

In such cases, documentation gaps and the ability to retreat to the country of origin compound law enforcement failures.

While the broader migrant population seeks work rather than crime, the pattern is real enough that communities experiencing both service strain and visible organised crime linked to irregular flows feel doubly burdened.

Social justice requires protecting citizens from such externalities while upholding due process for all.

Population Planning To Uphold Sovereignty Mindful of Finite Resources

The science and logic of population and urban planning is universal.

Every sovereign state plans population inflows against anticipated resource growth.

Urban planning worldwide uses demographic projections to size schools, clinics, housing, water reticulation, and electricity grids.

South Africa’s own spatial development frameworks and integrated development plans attempt this logic, yet unplanned and irregular inflows bypass those projections in key nodes.

This is not an argument against migration.

It is recognition that unmanaged surges in poor, low-skilled inflows into already disadvantaged spatial pockets create zero-sum pressures on opportunity and services for the very communities that endured apartheid’s exclusions.

Ubuntu demands we hold both truths: the humanity of those seeking better lives and the legitimate claim of existing residents, especially poor Black South Africans, to equitable access to the dividends of democracy.

An important consideration of population planning may be the regularisation of children and others born in South Africa before or around 1996 as reparative action for racial discrimination in immigration at the time and to ensure integration for proper resource and service planning.  

Pathways For Just Migration: Regulating with Ubuntu-centric Social Justice and Democratising Opportunity Good

South Africans can and must push back against hate while addressing the legitimate economic yearning that fuels focus on unregulated migration.

The answer lies in three interconnected pillars:

1. Regulate migration properly and enforce existing laws

Strengthen border management and documentation systems to reduce illicit entries and fake documentation.

Prioritise legal, skills-aligned, and capacity-respecting pathways. Fast-track asylum adjudication while distinguishing genuine refugees from economic migrants.

Enforce labour and business regulations evenly so that informal sector competition occurs on fair terms.

This reduces the “undocumented perpetrator” problem without collective punishment.

2. Democratise the economy and spread opportunity

Address the root driver, economic desperation, through pivoting economic policy to focus on horizontal economic growth to redress apartheid economic policies that decommissioned or constrained economic activities in historically black areas.

Instead of black economic empowerment funding going into big business to absorb a few, distribute the funding to restore colonial- and apartheid destroyed economic ecologies, particularly in rural areas, making sure each of the 44 districts and 4488 wards have an identifiable equitable share.

This just transition is more just resonant than current distributive schemes. The new economic deal should target the communities currently bearing the heaviest pressure. Key actions include:  

• Targeted support for township and rural small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs), including simplified licensing, access to finance, and skills programmes that enable local residents to compete effectively in the informal and formal sectors.

• Spatial economic interventions that bring productive opportunities closer to high-pressure townships and border towns rather than concentrating growth only in established metros.

• Accelerated skills development and vocational training aligned to real labour-market demand, with priority pathways for unemployed South African youth in affected communities.

• Land-use and housing reforms that expand affordable, well-located residential and economic space, reducing the density pressures that amplify competition for scarce resources, achieved through reviewing current regressive land disposal policies.

• Broader and decolonized economic inclusion measures, such as financial and procurement set-asides for local enterprises and support for worker cooperatives that grow the overall pie so that migration becomes a complement rather than a perceived threat to local livelihoods with needs-based allocations and clear accountabilities for all 4 488 wards.

• Consider naturalising children and others born in South Africa before or around 1996 to regularise the status of children born in South Africa to unregularised immigrants. 3. Protect communities from disproportionate burdens

• Conduct granular, locality-specific impact assessments rather than relying solely on national aggregates. Practical steps include:

• Ring-fencing dedicated resources and accelerated upgrading programmes (housing, water, electricity, schools, and clinics) for identified high-pressure townships, informal settlements, and border areas.

• Transparent, publicly available data dashboards at municipal and ward level that track migrant inflows, service utilisation, and local economic indicators so communities can see the picture clearly and participate in planning.

• Structured Gacaca-style community dialogues and integration initiatives, including civic education, language support, and joint economic projects that build mutual understanding while distinguishing ordinary migrants from criminal networks.

• Strengthened enforcement against transnational syndicates involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and organised crime, coupled with clear deportation protocols for convicted undocumented offenders to restore deterrence.

• Improve safeguards that ensure children’s right to education is upheld without undermining the capacity of schools in high-inflow districts.

• Subject all policy decisions and laws to an anticipatory social justice impact assessment.

Hate, related violence and blanket scapegoating of all foreigners betray Ubuntu.

At the same time, refusing to name and manage the real pressures of unplanned, concentrated, largely low-skilled and undocumented inflows also betrays the interconnected well-being Ubuntu requires in addition to being socially unjust.

The sober path is neither open borders nor closed hearts. It is sovereign, planned, humane regulation paired with democratising the economic pie so that no community is forced to compete for crumbs in overcrowded spaces.

Conclusion: South Africa’s strength has always lain in its capacity for honest reckoning and creative repair.

Let us apply that same spirit here.

By regulating migration in an Ubuntu-anchored social justice manner rooted in the Constitution while simultaneously expanding economic and social opportunities to those who are left behind, we honour both the stranger at the gate and the neighbour whose patience has already been tested for generations.

As an ubuntu-centred nation committed to transition into a society based on social justice and human rights, hate is neither who we are nor constitutionally resonant.

Neither is the denial of the reality of those who are shouldering the disproportionate burden of unregulated migration.  

Saying no to hate and yes to empathy with affected communities cannot only mutually coexist but can also underpin a sober, ubuntu-anchored, socially just and sustainable approach to migration.

At the core of future pathways is always being mindful of distributive impacts.

* The wrtier of this artcle is Professor Thuli (Thulisile) Madonsela, Law Faculty Trust Research Chair in Social Justice and Director of the Centre for Social Justice, Stellenbosch Universit. The views expressed by Professor Thuli Madonsela are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes

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