Anti-immigrant marches swept through several major South African cities, including Tshwane and Johannesburg, in early May 2026, triggering a fresh wave of concern about xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. The unrest prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to call on citizens to embrace solidarity with their African neighbours, while foreign governments lodged formal protests and police moved to curtail violence. The tension comes against a backdrop of worsening public attitudes — attitudes that new survey data suggest have never been more hostile toward migrants since records began.

The Human Sciences Research Council's South African Social Attitudes Survey, a nationally representative annual study conducted since 2003, paints a stark picture of a society turning inward. In 2003, roughly a third of South African adults said they would welcome all immigrants. By 2021 that figure had slipped to 26%, but the sharpest deterioration has come since then: in 2025, just 15% of adults expressed a fully welcoming attitude, while 42% said they would accept no immigrants at all — up from 30% in 2021. The shift represents the most hostile reading in the survey's two-decade history.

The geography and class dimensions of this trend are particularly revealing. Anti-immigrant sentiment has grown fastest in four provinces — Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga — which are the primary transit and settlement corridors for the more than two million international migrants living in South Africa. KwaZulu-Natal stands out as a flashpoint: the share of provincial residents unwilling to welcome any immigrants leapt from 23% in 2021 to 60% in 2025, a trajectory researchers link to acute economic frustration. Some 88% of the province's residents report dissatisfaction with current economic conditions, and an equal proportion expect things to worsen over the next five years. Historically, anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa cut across class lines, but since the COVID-19 pandemic, hostility has grown most aggressively among low-income and lower-middle-income groups, who have been hit hardest by a cost-of-living crisis and persistent deindustrialisation.

Experts are careful to note that South Africa's persistently high unemployment and elevated crime rates cannot be directly attributed to migrants, yet foreigners are increasingly cast as scapegoats for structural economic failures. The government adopted a National Action Plan to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in March 2019, but researchers say it has demonstrably failed to slow the rise in hostility, whether through lack of resources, coordination or political will.

The stakes are high. South Africa is scheduled to hold local government elections on 4 November 2026, and analysts warn that aspirant political parties may seek to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment for electoral gain, potentially accelerating an already dangerous trend. Researchers and civil society groups are calling on political, civic and community leaders to address legitimate socio-economic grievances through structural reform rather than allowing migrants to serve as a convenient target — warning that without urgent and well-resourced intervention, the conditions for widespread xenophobic violence will only deepen.