Abahambe stomps on our shared African history

There is something deeply painful about hearing African people shout “Abahambe” at other African people.

It sounds like anger. It sounds like a demand. It sounds like people who are tired. And we must not lie: our people are tired. They are tired of unemployment. Tired of crime. Tired of clinics without medicine. Tired of schools that do not teach. Tired of Home Affairs queues. Tired of police who arrive late or not at all. Tired of politicians who arrive only before elections. Tired of being told to be patient while their lives collapse.

But the question is: who is responsible for this suffering? Is it the woman from Zimbabwe selling tomatoes? Is it the Mozambican brother fixing a roof? Is it the Malawian worker standing in a queue at Home Affairs? Is it the Congolese refugee running from war? Is it the Somali shopkeeper trying to survive? Is it the Basotho worker whose family has been crossing those mountains long before colonial borders were drawn? Or is it the system that has made all of us poor, disposable, divided and angry?

The Abahambe anti-migrant vigilantes are dangerous because they take real pain and point it in the wrong direction. They take genuine grievances and convert them into right-wing politics. They take the hunger of the poor and feed it with lies. They take the anger of working-class people and turn it away from capital, the state, corruption, unemployment, collapsing services and inequality – and direct it at other poor Africans.

That is not courage. That is not patriotism. That is not justice. It is political cowardice dressed up as community defence.

We are a people of movement

The first lie of xenophobia is that South Africans are pure insiders and everyone else is an outsider. Patrick Tariq Mellet’s work on our deep history shows something very different. Long before passports, Home Affairs, border posts and colonial maps, people moved up and down this continent over thousands of years. They moved with cattle, seeds, languages, songs, iron, stories, spiritual practices, names, marriages and ways of life. Africa was never a prison of little boxes. It was a continent of movement.

The people who call themselves South African today are themselves the descendants of movement. Some came through ancient migrations. Some came through trade. Some came through slavery. Some came through colonial conquest. Some came through war, labour migration, mission schools, mines, farms, ports, railways and cities. Some were dragged. Some walked. Some fled. Some searched for work. Some crossed rivers and mountains because families, cattle, land and life were already spread across what Europeans later turned into borders. We were not born in a queue at Home Affairs. We were born in Africa.

That is why the worship of colonial borders is so foolish. The same borders that Abahambe now wants us to worship were drawn by colonial powers to divide African peoples, control land, extract labour and manage empire. They cut families in half. They divided kingdoms, languages, clans, grazing routes, rivers and histories. They made people ‘foreign’ on land where their grandparents had moved, worked, loved and buried their dead. To defend those borders as if they are sacred is to kneel before colonial cartography.

The train from Zimbabwe

If we want to understand South Africa, we must listen to our music. Hugh Masekela’s Stimela is not just a song. It is an archive. It is a people’s history carried by trumpet, breath and pain. It tells of the coal train that came from Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, eSwatini and the whole Southern African region, bringing men to the mines of Johannesburg. Those men did not come to steal South Africa. They came to build it.

Through their sweat and toil, they generated its wealth. They went underground. They carried the rocks. They coughed up dust. They lived in compounds. They were paid poverty wages. They were broken by migrant labour. They built the wealth of mining houses, the gold economy, Johannesburg, the railways, the banks and the white suburbs. They were exploited together with our grandfathers from the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, North West, the Free State and the old homelands. They were not the enemies of South African workers. They were the South African working class in its regional form.

And then there is Shosholoza. People sing it at rugby matches and corporate events, as if it is just a nice national song. But Shosholoza is a migrant labour song. It is about the train from Zimbabwe. It is about movement, labour, longing, hardship and collective endurance. It belongs to workers who crossed borders before those borders became weapons against them. So when we sing Shosholoza and then shout ‘Abahambe’, we are singing with one mouth and betraying with the other.

Our families cross borders because our history crosses borders

There are families in Mpumalanga, eSwatini and Mozambique who are one family split into three states. The Mnisi family is one example. There are families across Lesotho, the Free State, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal who cannot be understood through the border post alone. There are families across Limpopo, North West, Botswana and Zimbabwe whose common histories are older than the modern state. Colonialism did not ask African families for permission before drawing borders through their lives.

That is why the idea of ‘foreigner’ becomes complicated in Southern Africa. Of course, modern states have laws. Of course, movement must be managed. Of course, people need documents. But law must be read with history, justice and humanity. When law becomes a stick for beating the poor, it is no longer justice. It becomes administration in the service of cruelty.

The problem is not that ordinary people are moving. The problem is that capital has always moved freely while poor people are criminalised for doing the same.

Money crosses borders. Mining companies cross borders. Retail chains cross borders. Banks cross borders. Trucks cross borders. Politicians cross borders. White farmers and investors cross borders. But when poor Africans cross borders to work, trade, survive or seek safety, suddenly everyone discovers the law. That is hypocrisy.

Africans built South Africa

Let us say it plainly. Africans from across the continent and the region helped build South Africa. Clements Kadalie, born in Nyasaland, now Malawi, became one of the most important labour organisers in South African history through the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (the ICU). The ICU was not only a South African organisation in the narrow nationalist sense. The ICU became one of the first great mass working-class formations in Southern Africa, spreading its influence into present-day Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and beyond. It organised dockworkers, farmworkers, domestic workers, mineworkers, tenants, rural labourers and the urban poor across colonial borders. This matters because it reminds us that working-class organisation in this region was born regionally, not inside the little boxes later worshipped by xenophobes. The ICU understood, long before Abahambe, that the worker from Malawi, the worker from Zimbabwe, the worker from Lesotho, the worker from Mozambique and the worker from South Africa were not enemies. They were part of the same exploited Southern African working class, facing the same colonial employers, the same mines, the same farms, the same pass laws, the same hunger and the same struggle for dignity.

Albert Luthuli, one of the great presidents of the ANC and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was born in what is now Zimbabwe. Should the people of Zimbabwe shout “Abahambe” to his family? James Motlatsi, founding president of the National Union of Mineworkers, came from Lesotho. Thomas Nkobi, a key ANC treasurer-general in exile, was born in what is now Zimbabwe. Dorothy Masuka, one of our great musical voices, was born in Rhodesia. Jimmy Dludlu, who shaped South African jazz, was born in Mozambique. Were these people ‘foreigners’ to South African freedom?

Robert Mugabe and Ntsu Mokhehle passed through Fort Hare, that great university of African nationalism. Hastings Kamuzu Banda worked in South Africa before becoming a central figure in Malawi’s history. Many African intellectuals, workers, teachers, nurses, musicians, organisers and militants have moved through this country and shaped it.

Even our liberation struggle was never only South African. The ANC was born with a Southern African imagination. It organised across borders. It lived in exile. It built camps, offices, schools, diplomatic networks and military structures in African countries. It survived because other Africans carried the cost. Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Lesotho, Botswana, eSwatini and others gave space to our movement. Their people paid for our freedom. Some paid with their lives.

When apartheid South Africa bombed Maseru in 1982, it killed people in Lesotho because Lesotho gave shelter to our struggle. When apartheid forces raided Maputo, they killed people in Mozambique because Mozambique stood with the oppressed of South Africa. The apartheid state destabilised the whole region through war, assassination, sabotage, economic pressure and military aggression. It destroyed lives in Angola, Mozambique, Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia and beyond.

So when someone says “only South Africans fought for South Africa’s freedom”, they are not just wrong. They are spitting on the graves of African comrades.

The lie of ‘illegal migrants’

Abahambe tries to hide its cruelty behind one phrase: “We are only against illegal migrants.” This sounds reasonable until you look closer. What makes a person ‘illegal’? No human being is illegal. A person may be undocumented. A person may have an expired permit. A person may be trapped in an asylum backlog. A person may be unable to renew papers because Home Affairs is broken. A person may have fled war without documents. A person may have lost papers in a shack fire. A person may be a child born here to parents whose status is unresolved. A person may have lived here for twenty years and still be treated as temporary.

Home Affairs itself manufactures undocumented people. Its queues, corruption, backlogs, closures, delays and impossible procedures push people into irregular status. For example, South Africa has a backlog of 161,000 asylum appeal cases which take forever to be processed. Then vigilantes arrive to punish the victim of the same broken state that fails South Africans.

This is why the language of ‘illegal migrants’ is dangerous. It turns administrative failure into human criminality. It makes the poor carry the blame for state collapse.

Yes, we need a functioning migration system. Yes, we need proper documentation. Yes, employers who exploit undocumented workers must be punished. Yes, corrupt officials must be exposed. Yes, labour standards must apply to everyone. But that is very different from vigilantes hunting people in townships, clinics, schools and workplaces.

A progressive demand is not ‘Abahambe’. A progressive demand is: document people, protect workers, punish exploitative employers, fix Home Affairs, defend communities, stop corruption, build regional solidarity, and organise the working class across borders.

Europe knows what Africa is told to forget

There is another hypocrisy. Europe lectures Africa about borders, order and legality. Yet within Europe itself, open borders and regional integration have been central to economic growth, labour mobility, tourism, trade, study, family life and social exchange. The Schengen area allows people to move across many European countries without internal border controls. The European Union’s single market rests on the movement of goods, services, capital and people.

So Europe knows that integration can build economies. But Africa is told to remain fragmented. Small markets. Hard borders. Weak regional transport. Poor cross-border planning. Migrants treated as criminals. Workers divided. Families separated. Traders harassed. Informal cross-border economies suffocated. Regional development held back.

Southern Africa needs the opposite of Abahambe. We need deeper regional integration, planned development, common labour standards, social protection across borders, industrial policy across the region, transport corridors that serve people and not only extraction, and a migration system rooted in dignity.

We also need to speak honestly about how South Africa has benefited and continues to benefit from regional inequality. The Southern African Customs Union arrangement has long tied countries like Lesotho and eSwatini to South Africa’s economy in unequal ways. Apartheid destabilisation destroyed neighbouring economies. South African mines pulled labour from the region, while profits accumulated in South Africa and abroad. Today, South African retailers, banks and corporations operate across the region while poor migrants are treated as invaders. That is not regional justice. That is regional domination.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project carries water from Lesotho’s mountains into South Africa’s industrial heartland, helping sustain Gauteng’s cities, mines, factories and suburbs, while many Basotho communities remain poor and dependent. Cahora Bassa in Mozambique has supplied electricity to the Southern African regional grid and historically fed South African industrial needs, even as Mozambique itself carried the scars of colonialism, apartheid destabilisation, war and underdevelopment. For decades, South Africa’s economy has drawn labour and resources from poorer neighbouring countries, and South African capital expands across the region. Yet when poor people from those same countries follow the routes created by labour, water, electricity and capital, they are called criminals and invaders.

The above shows something Abahambe refuses to think about: South Africa does not only receive people from the region. It also receives wealth, water, electricity, labour and development advantages from the region. This is the hypocrisy at the heart of xenophobia: South Africa wants the region’s water, electricity, labour, markets and profits, but not the region’s people. A just politics must say clearly that Southern Africa’s poverty and South Africa’s wealth were produced together. We cannot extract from the region and then spit on the people of the region.

Abahambe is a dead end

The anger in our communities is real. But Abahambe offers a dead end.

If every undocumented migrant left tomorrow, would unemployment disappear? Would the mines reopen? Would factories return? Would Eskom work? Would municipalities stop collapsing? Would clinics have medicine? Would police defeat crime? Would landlords reduce rent? Would spaza shops suddenly become engines of people’s power? Would white monopoly capital surrender its wealth? Would politicians stop stealing? No.

Because migrants did not create neoliberalism. Migrants did not loot Eskom. Migrants did not destroy PRASA. Migrants did not design apartheid spatial planning. Migrants did not retrench workers. Migrants did not collapse local government. Migrants did not create the tender system. Migrants did not steal land. Migrants did not create the banks, retailers and mining houses that dominate and make massive profits from our lives.

The ruling class is very happy when the poor fight each other. Every stone thrown at a migrant is a stone not thrown at the system. Every shop looted in the name of xenophobia strengthens the bosses, the criminals and the right wing. Every African chased from a clinic is a victory for those who want public services to collapse. Every worker divided by nationality makes it easier for employers to cut wages. Abahambe says it is defending South Africans. In reality, it is weakening the South African working class.

Mayibuye iAfrika

Homo naledi, found in the Cradle of Humankind, reminds us that Southern Africa is part of the deep story of humanity. Long before the passport, long before the dompas, long before the border fence, human beings moved. We moved because movement is part of life. We moved because climate changed, food shifted, rivers called, danger came, love happened, work was needed, and curiosity pulled us beyond the horizon.

When we say Mayibuye iAfrika, we cannot mean a little South Africa fenced off from the rest of the continent. We mean the return of Africa to itself. We mean the closing of a circle broken by slavery, colonialism, apartheid, borders, migrant labour, Bantustans, war and neoliberalism. We mean that Africa must come back to Africans – not to presidents and generals and billionaires, but to workers, women, peasants, migrants, youth, shack dwellers, miners, artists, teachers, nurses, street traders and all who carry this continent on their backs.

That is why we must reject Abahambe. Not because there are no problems. There are many problems. But because Abahambe is the wrong answer to real problems. It is ahistorical. It is cruel. It is politically backward. It is a movement that stomps on the very history that made us.

Our answer must be different. Not open season on migrants, but open struggle against exploitation. Not vigilantes, but organised communities. Not xenophobia, but working-class unity. Not colonial borders as prison walls, but African solidarity as a living force. Not ‘Abahambe’. Sithi (we say): Masibambane! Mayibuye iAfrika!

Jara is with the Zabalaza Pathways Institute (www.zabalazapathways.online)