A Continent Connected: Immigration Law, African Heritage and the Fight Against Afrophobia.

Every September, South Africa celebrates the languages, traditions and histories that shape its national identity. Yet Heritage Month should also encourage us to look beyond national borders and remember that South Africa’s heritage has never developed in isolation.

For centuries, African communities have moved across the continent to trade, work, study, form families and seek safety. Borders may divide states, but they cannot erase the cultural, economic and family ties connecting African people. From shared languages and customs to liberation movements supported across the continent, South Africa’s story is inseparable from the story of Africa.

This makes Heritage Month an important time to confront Afrophobia: the fear, hostility or discrimination directed particularly at African migrants and people perceived to be foreign.

Immigration enforcement must remain lawful

South Africa has the sovereign authority to regulate its borders, administer visas and enforce immigration legislation. However, immigration control must always be exercised within the Constitution and the rule of law.

Immigration status does not determine whether a person possesses human dignity. While certain constitutional rights are expressly reserved for citizens, many fundamental protections apply to “everyone.” These include the rights to equality, dignity, life, freedom and security of the person, fair labour practices, just administrative action and access to courts. The Constitution also protects every person against violence from both public and private sources.

This means that a person suspected of being undocumented may not lawfully be assaulted, threatened, publicly humiliated or denied basic protection. Their nationality, language or appearance does not permit private individuals to search them, demand documents or forcibly remove them from communities.

Determining a person’s immigration status is a function of authorised state officials operating under legislation—not community organisations, political movements or private citizens.

The courts have drawn a clear line

The fight against Afrophobia reached an important legal moment in Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia and Others v Operation Dudula and Others.

In November 2025, the Gauteng High Court declared various forms of conduct associated with Operation Dudula unlawful. The organisation was interdicted from intimidating, harassing and assaulting foreign nationals; unlawfully demanding identity documents; interfering with access to healthcare and schools; and engaging in hate speech based on nationality, ethnicity or social origin.

The judgment reaffirmed a foundational principle: no person or organisation may take the law into their own hands. Suspected immigration violations must be reported to the appropriate authorities and addressed through lawful procedures.

The ruling did not prevent lawful debate about immigration policy. Instead, it drew a necessary distinction between legitimate public discussion and conduct that becomes intimidation, exclusion, vigilantism or hate speech.

Afrophobia cannot solve administrative failure

South Africa faces genuine immigration challenges. Visa backlogs, porous borders, corruption, fraudulent documentation and delays in asylum decisions place pressure on applicants, officials and communities. These concerns require firm and effective government action.

However, administrative failure cannot justify collective punishment.

An asylum seeker waiting for a delayed decision is not automatically an unlawful immigrant. A refugee is not responsible for failures at the Department of Home Affairs. A foreign national should not be presumed undocumented because of their accent, clothing or appearance. Even where a person has no lawful status, removal must follow the procedures established by the Immigration Act and the Constitution.

When public frustration is redirected towards African migrants, complicated structural problems are reduced to a dangerous accusation: that every foreign national is responsible for unemployment, crime or strained public services. Such generalisations obscure the causes of these problems while exposing vulnerable people—including women, children, refugees and long-term residents—to violence and exclusion.

Heritage is also a history of solidarity

South Africa’s liberation struggle was sustained by solidarity from across Africa. Countries including Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola and others offered refuge, training and political support to South Africans resisting apartheid.

That history creates a moral responsibility to reject the idea that African migrants are inherently outsiders or threats. Remembering African solidarity does not require South Africa to abandon its immigration laws. It requires those laws to be administered consistently, efficiently and humanely.

This principle also reflects the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which imagines a more integrated continent built on unity, shared prosperity and greater freedom of movement. Its vision recognises that human mobility can contribute to trade, skills development, investment and cultural exchange when it is properly governed.

Building a lawful and connected continent

The fight against Afrophobia requires more than public condemnation. It requires:

• efficient and transparent immigration administration;

• timely decisions on visa, asylum and permanent-residence applications;

• proper enforcement by authorised state officials;

• access to written reasons and lawful appeal procedures;

• accountability for intimidation, violence and hate speech;

• responsible political language; and

• public education about the rights and obligations of migrants.

A country does not protect its borders by abandoning its constitutional values. It protects them by ensuring that immigration laws are enforced by the correct authorities, through fair procedures and with respect for human dignity.

This Heritage Month, South Africa should celebrate not only the cultures found within its borders, but also the continental relationships that helped shape the nation. Our laws may distinguish between citizens, permanent residents, refugees, asylum seekers and temporary visitors—but our shared humanity cannot be divided by nationality.

Africa’s people have always been connected. The challenge before us is to ensure that our immigration system manages that movement without allowing fear to become hatred, enforcement to become vigilantism or borders to become barriers to dignity.

If you have experienced an unlawful immigration decision, discrimination, intimidation or difficulties with your legal status in South Africa, contact Ndou Attorneys Inc. for professional legal assistance.