It is “anti-illegal immigration”, not “anti-immigration”.

To label the aggrieved vigilantes is to condescendingly saunter about bereft of empathy for those burdened with pain of walking with stones in their shoes.

Narrative-fixers blur this immigration on purpose. This clouds the issue. It makes honest resolution impossible.

Behind the blur are other maladies that lurk beneath what the eye can see.

Farm exploitation

Undocumented workers are paid slave wages, opening them up to living in slave conditions.

Some are killed, buried in shallow graves and there is no next of kin to report them missing as the fact of their demise remains concealed by the perpetrators for purposes of defeating the ends of justice.

The adversarial employee-employer encounters are a show of retaliation and desperation occurring in a climate fraught with illegality, for the wood to be confused for the forest.

Lost in the skirmish are workers who kill employers who refuse to pay and vice versa, to see many escaping with murder by either side, all hinging on the absence or presence of bogus documentation, opening parties to the toxicity of recurring extortive relations.

Occurring within these cloak and dagger relations are employers who insure undocumented workers, then kill them to claim.

As if that is not criminal enough, no aspect of South African life is not haunted by crime syndicates, all specialising in different spheres to ply their respective illicit trades.

These criminal zones of mafia types include human trafficking, counterfeit goods dispatched to spaza shops, with consequences of food poisoning that have left children dead.

On the menu of these forever increasing list of vices descending on aggrieved black communities is drug proliferation, subjugating enlisted runners into drug mules. Ingredients into the mix are identity thefts, bulldozing the vulnerable from their homes, hijacked buildings, generation of false marriages, undetected divorces, and deaths registered without consent of next of kin or survivors. Ubiquitous and topping all this is cybercrime.

State capture

The incapacitation of the state is unfolding in plain sight right inside the belly of trusted public institutions.

There is brazen moonlighting by officials of the Department of Home Affairs colluding to sell false documents, be it study visas, work permits, qualifications and elaborate schemes for ‘women and men of god’ to earn undeserved status to pursue underhanded activities under the cover of the freedom of religion.

An assortment of these factors cumulatively manifests in erosion of data integrity, the voters roll, and election outcomes.

A real analysis is lost in the emotion-charged drama of actors with a criss-cross of immigration interests compromising the state sovereignty to own ends.

In the rage of this illegal immigration storm, the other side that goes unnoticed are smooth sailors waving from Ukraine, Western and Eastern Europe settling in South Africa that is receptive to their whiteness to escape scrutiny and censure. Never mind the dual citizens doubling as Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in Israel, shuttling as they please.

Adding their share of settler arrogance are British immigrants aligning with AfriForum/Solidarity/DA/FF+.

Their invasive entry into the country nests on the false narrative backings of ex-SA and Namibian billionaires now US based — Elon Musk Peter Thiel — peddling “white genocide” big lie. This is the headline wayward billionaires’ focus their energies is on instead of subjecting their business goals to operate in South Africa by abiding with legislation spurred by what liberation had promised.

Their silly preoccupation has been a fixation with the big lie of ‘white genocide’ for peddling to secure active support of US President Donald Trump to give rationale to the prioritisation of ‘Afrikaner refugees’ in that country.

While those gaining entry into the US as Amerikkaners soon learned the grass is not greener, those staying behind under the same lie of ‘white genocide’ led by disillusioned British citizen Phil Craig, who emigrated from the United Kingdom to South Africa in 2004, audaciously pushes for the Western Cape province to break away from the rest of South Africa.

In other words, immigration has been weaponised against South Africa for hidden and open agendas.

The arrest of a Free State politician’s husband for allegedly housing undocumented foreigners hopelessly shows how deep the runaway immigration sore afflicting South Africa runs.

For the meaning of June 30, 2026, to be clear, let the message be kept straight that the issue is a distinction that most keep refusing to make: it is about anti-illegal immigration and not anti-immigration.

Ngwenya is a Corporate Strategist, Writer, and Freelance Journalist