PHILILE NTULI | Who is the third force fanning the anti-foreigner violence?

South Africa and the continent are tense with anticipation for what appears to be a crisis waiting to explode. Yet the moment carries an unsettling familiarity. What we are witnessing is not simply sentiment directed against non-national or irregular migration. Neither is it the mere expression of public frustration over unemployment and state failures. Rather, it is the reactivation of a political grammar that South Africa has seen and heard before. One that draws selectively wounded masculinities, cultural symbolism, economic abandonment and the mobilisation of idle young men into spectacles of rage. The parallels with the period preceding the July 2021 unrest are too significant to ignore.

In the period before July 2021, the country experienced an escalating manufacture of grievances. Communities living with structural unemployment, deepening inequality and social abandonment became fertile terrain for mobilisation. But the mobilisation was never only economic. It was profoundly symbolic. At its centre was the invocation of Zulu masculinity.

Young unemployed men were called upon to “defend”, “protect” and “restore order” for “the nation”. Zulu cultural idioms and selective interpretations of custom were mobilised as political weapons. A particular image of the Zulu man was elevated: militant, aggrieved, hyper-masculine and perpetually ready for confrontation. The historical complexity of Zulu identity, with its own traditions of diplomacy, stewardship, discipline and social cohesion, was flattened into a caricature of violence.

On June 30 2021, the day following the Constitutional Court decision to sentence former president Jacob Zuma to prison, protests erupted across the country. The report of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) into the unrest noted the following: “From the day after the court ruling ... until his incarceration, former president Zuma’s supporters gathered outside his home in Nkandla. Most were reportedly wearing either the regalia of the ANC, army fatigues representing uMkhonto weSizwe, or the full gear of the Amabutho. War cries and songs reverberated. Some brandished weapons, and the sound of live ammunition featured prominently in media reports.”

That caricature did not emerge accidentally. It served a political purpose.

Today, one sees similar patterns re-emerging as threats of the mass exodus of non-nationals on June 30 gain traction. Again, there is the invocation of territorial protection. Again, unemployed young men are being positioned as the foot soldiers. Again, cultural language and notions of Zulu masculinities are being weaponised. And once again, the state appears dangerously reactive rather than preventative.

What makes this moment particularly volatile is that it brings together mass unemployment, the collapse of institutional trust and the circulation of grievance politics amplified digitally.

Large numbers of young people experience prolonged exclusion from meaningful work, stable futures and social recognition. In such conditions, political identity becomes one of the few remaining currencies of belonging. Mobilisation offers meaning where the economy offers none. To “defend” and “protect” offers status where society offers invisibility.

It reduces one of Africa’s most historically sophisticated political cultures into a permanent shorthand for rage and disorder

This is why simplistic explanations that frame anti-non-national violence as mere “criminality” fail to grasp the deeper dynamics. The violence is performative. It produces solidarity, spectacle and masculine affirmation for people who otherwise experience social redundancy. The crowd becomes a substitute for citizenship. The march becomes a substitute for idle time. The policing of outsiders becomes a substitute for social and political power.

And crucially, this mobilisation often depends on a dangerous mythology: that violence is somehow intrinsic to Zulu political expression. This mythology harms everyone. It harms non-nationals who become targets of organised hostility; South African communities who are drawn into cycles of instability and retaliation; and Zulu society itself, because it reduces one of Africa’s most historically sophisticated political cultures into a permanent shorthand for rage and disorder.

South Africans are justified in their anger over unemployment, inequality, collapsing public services, and weak governance. Communities are carrying an immense strain. But migrants did not create the structural failures of the South African state. Nor will violence resolve them. Instead, history shows that such mobilisation eventually consumes entire communities, destroys local economies, and leaves behind trauma that lasts for generations.

July 2021 should have taught us this lesson. What began as political mobilisation rapidly mutated into widespread destruction, vigilantism, racialised fear, economic devastation and death. Today, the warning signs are visible again.

The task now is not only law enforcement. It is narrative intervention. Political leaders, traditional leaders, media institutions and civil society must refuse the romanticisation of violent masculinities.

Another unresolved issue from 2021 concerns who possessed the organisational capacity to sustain the unrest. In its report, the SAHRC found that: “Primary actors led and executed the widespread destruction of property, and perpetrated arson attacks. They mobilised secondary actors, who participated in acts of theft at malls and other business premises.”

Five years later, South Africans still do not know who the primary instigators of the 2021 unrest are, and therefore who financed, co-ordinated, or materially benefited from the destruction that unfolded.

Those questions matter again today.

Across provinces, we are witnessing highly co-ordinated campaigns. Messaging is amplified through social media. Transport, branded regalia, public demonstrations and sustained visibility all suggest access to resources beyond spontaneous community frustrations. South Africa must ask: who is funding this mobilisation? Who benefits politically? What networks, be they political, business, or ideological, are enabling this moment?

Social instability often creates opportunities for political entrepreneurs who weaponise public anger while remaining invisible behind the scenes. The visible crowd is rarely the full story. Attention focuses on the unemployed young men helping each other to carry looted fridges out of shops, but far less scrutiny is directed at those who may be cultivating, financing or strategically directing the conditions for confrontation.

If we fail to interrupt this moment early, South Africa risks entering another cycle where social pain is redirected downward onto the vulnerable while structural causes of despair remain untouched. And once again, the country will ask afterwards how it failed to see the warning signs that were already there. South Africa simply cannot afford this.

*Ntuli is a commissioner at the SAHRC