South Africa’s migration anger may be less about borders than personal debt, rising costs and a shared household finance crisis.
Every Africa Month, South Africa marks the African Union’s 63-year-old dream of shared sovereignty, shared prosperity and a borderless continent built together. Africa Day fell on 25 May. The flags went up. The speeches were made.
That same week, the March and March movement staged anti-migration protests in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Durban. Ghana’s diplomatic mission warned its nationals to close their shops and offered repatriation. Nigerian community associations issued similar alerts. Human Rights Watch urged South African authorities to act. These events underscore the economic pain driving SA’s migration debate and the tensions shaping public discourse.
The money argument of it all
At the centre of the discussion lies an economic claim. Foreign nationals are accused of taking jobs, suppressing wages and straining public systems. Migrant communities counter that they pay taxes, create businesses, fill skills gaps and spend locally.
Meanwhile, Africa Month’s language of trade, integration and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) sits uneasily above these competing narratives. Both claims deserve scrutiny. However, neither side is receiving it.
What the numbers really say
With unemployment at 32.7% and youth unemployment at 60.9%, the debate revolves around competing pressures. On one side are concerns about jobs, informal trade, remittances and strained public services. On the other hand are tax contributions, business creation, skills shortages and local spending.
Non-national dominance in spaza shops and street trade is seen as crowding locals out, while remittances are viewed as money leaving South Africa. Migrants counter that their businesses create jobs, fill skills gaps and support the economy through local spending. Both can be true at once. The real question is which effect is larger, where, and for whom.
The household crisis behind the anger
The debate lacked an honest examination of debt and personal finances on both sides of the issue. With 75% of South Africans who borrowed last year using credit to buy food, rather than assets or luxuries, the household crisis is clear. Many foreign nationals, who often manage multiple currencies, are also under severe financial pressure.
Unemployment among foreign-born residents stands significantly lower at 18.2%, compared to 34% for locally born South Africans. However, this could indicate that foreign nationals are filling roles that the domestic labour market cannot supply.
The unemployment rate tells you who is working. It does not tell you whether a job was taken from someone. Those are very different questions. Conflating them is how this debate stays stuck. The movement resonates because South African households face severe financial pressure. This pressure reflects the economic pain driving SA’s migration debate, a crisis that immigration alone cannot explain.
A structural crisis, not a simple migration story
The deeper problem is structural. South Africa has experienced more than two decades of unemployment above 25%. The energy crisis has worsened the situation. Skills mismatches, weak infrastructure and post-COVID-19 debt pressures have also contributed. These challenges predate immigration and outweigh its labour-market impact.
The March and March movement has successfully channelled that financial anguish toward immigration. Whether that direction is accurate is a separate question from whether the anguish itself is legitimate, because it absolutely is.
Similarly, documented African professionals in South Africa face specific and significant financial pressures. Yet public conversations rarely acknowledge these realities because those experiencing them often remain silent. Many over-indebted foreign national clients avoid formal assistance. They fear, wrongly but deeply, that a financial paper trail could affect their immigration status.
For many African professionals, remittances create an additional burden. South African credit often funds family emergencies, healthcare and education across borders. These pressures further illustrate the economic pain driving SA’s migration debate.
A R3,000 remittance may leave South Africa. However, that person has likely already paid rent, purchased food, used transport and contributed to the local economy.
Where both sides need to be more honest
The movement must acknowledge evidence showing that migration did not create South Africa’s unemployment crisis. At the same time, migrant advocates must recognise that concerns about informal trade and public services are genuine, even when the solutions are not xenophobic.
The tragedy is that both groups are often trapped in the same financial crisis. They face the same debt pressure, rising costs and lack of a real safety net.
The gap between the African Union’s vision of unity and the realities in Johannesburg and 
Tshwane remains stark. South Africans and African migrants are not primarily fighting one another. Instead, they are confronting the same rising costs, expensive credit and job-poor economy.
When I look at consumers facing a debt crisis walking through our doors every day, I don’t see an immigration debate. I see a cost-of-living crisis wearing different faces. That is the number that should be uniting people this Africa Month, not the one being used to divide them. Ultimately, the economic pain driving SA’s migration debate may reveal less about borders and more about the shared financial pressures confronting households across South Africa.
Sebastien Alexanderson | Head | National Debt Advisors (NDA) | mail me |
