South African President Cyril Ramaphosa condemns discrimination against foreign nationals, reminds South Africans of the sacrifices their African neighbours made during the struggle against apartheid and lays out his vision for a more integrated Southern Africa.
By Ajong Mbapndah L
President Cyril Ramaphosa has delivered one of his strongest rebukes of hostility towards foreign Africans in South Africa, saying the discrimination and ill-treatment of foreign nationals is a source of shame and cannot be reconciled with the regional integration his country champions.
Speaking at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, August 14, ahead of the 46th Southern African Development Community Summit, Ramaphosa turned the spotlight on South Africa itself. A country whose liberation was supported at enormous cost by its African neighbours, he argued, cannot speak of regional solidarity while citizens from those countries face intimidation, harassment and discrimination on South African soil.
“As South Africans, we are deeply concerned and ashamed that nationals from other countries have in recent months been subjected to discrimination and ill-treatment,” Ramaphosa said. He described the actions as a repudiation of the solidarity on which SADC was founded and followed with perhaps the strongest line of the address: “We cannot preach integration at summits and practise exclusion in our streets.”
A Frank Admission From Ramaphosa
Ramaphosa’s acknowledgement touched on an issue that has repeatedly strained South Africa’s relations with other African countries. Hostility towards migrants, particularly Africans, has remained a source of concern even as Pretoria continues to champion continental integration and closer economic cooperation.
The President referred to the perpetrators as a minority, describing their conduct as the “criminal actions of a few within our communities.” But he was equally emphatic that people cannot be intimidated or harassed simply because they are regarded as coming from elsewhere.
“If we are serious about building an integrated region, we must build a Southern Africa in which the equal rights of all people are respected, where all people are treated decently. We cannot submit to intimidation and harassment of people seen as coming from elsewhere,” he said.
South Africa has for years wrestled with difficult debates over migration, unemployment, access to public services and undocumented immigration. Ramaphosa did not argue against immigration enforcement. Instead, he made the distinction between enforcing laws and allowing foreign nationals to become targets because of where they come from.
South Africa Owes a Debt to Africa
Ramaphosa reached back to the liberation struggle to make his case, reminding South Africans that neighbouring countries paid heavily for standing against apartheid. Liberation movements found refuge across the region, while frontline states endured military attacks, sabotage, economic disruption and loss of life.
“We can never forget that the freedom that South Africans enjoy today was, in great measure, paid for by the people of our region and continent,” he said, recalling that the community from which SADC emerged was founded as an act of “moral solidarity.”
The history makes present-day hostility towards other Africans especially uncomfortable. Countries that opened their borders to South African liberation movements and suffered retaliation for doing so now see some of their citizens treated as outsiders in democratic South Africa.
Ramaphosa’s message was that this history cannot simply be remembered at commemorations. The solidarity shown to South Africans during apartheid must also shape how South Africa relates to the continent today.
‘Our People Are the Product of Migration’
Ramaphosa also challenged the notion that migration is somehow foreign to Southern Africa. Movement across the region existed long before the borders of its modern states were drawn.
“Southern Africa has borne witness to the movement of people over millennia. Our people are the product of migration,” he said, adding that migration accounts for much of the region’s “diversity, vibrancy and richness.”
He did not advocate uncontrolled movement. His call was for a region where people are able to move freely according to established principles, protocols and laws, while governments work together to tackle the conditions pushing people from their homes.
Conflict, instability, governance failure, poverty and social discord all drive migration, Ramaphosa said. Addressing them requires cooperation between governments, alongside stronger economies and more inclusive institutions. “We seek a region where people move out of choice, not out of desperation,” he said.
Breaking Down the Colonial Barriers
Ramaphosa placed migration within a much wider argument about what Southern Africa should look like by 2050. His picture is of a region where borders inherited from colonialism become less of an obstacle to commerce, skills, investment and movement.
SADC Vision 2050 envisages a region where colonial borders no longer hinder the free flow of knowledge, capital, goods, services, skills and people. Ramaphosa said countries across the region share a common destiny and will struggle to achieve lasting prosperity if they continue operating largely in isolation from one another.
He traced part of the problem to the economic systems inherited from colonialism. Southern Africa was deliberately fragmented, producers were separated from markets and transport networks were built to carry African raw materials to distant shores rather than connect African economies.
That structure has not completely disappeared. Countries rich in minerals, agricultural resources and energy still export large quantities of raw materials and import expensive finished products. Ramaphosa wants SADC to break that cycle through regional industrialisation.
‘We Export the Ore and Import the Battery’
Critical minerals provided one of his clearest examples. Southern Africa possesses significant deposits of minerals needed for the global energy transition, but much of the value is created after those resources have left African shores.
“We export the ore and we import the battery,” Ramaphosa said. “We supply an industrial revolution taking place somewhere else and we then purchase its products at a price set by others.”
His prescription was equally direct: “We need to use our own resources to drive our own industrial revolution.”
That means more refining and smelting capacity, regional electricity generation and transmission, cross-border water projects and better roads, railways and ports. Ramaphosa also called for the SADC Regional Development Fund to be operationalised so the region can mobilise more of its own resources for industrialisation and infrastructure.
Southern Africa, he argued, already has much of what it needs: energy, minerals, agricultural resources, financial institutions, skills and markets. The weakness is that these assets remain spread across economies that are insufficiently connected.
A Market Africa Cannot Lose
The urgency of building stronger regional markets has increased as the global economy becomes more unpredictable. Wars and geopolitical tensions far from Southern Africa are disrupting shipping, agricultural exports and fertiliser supplies while raising food and energy costs.
“Access to a distant market, however valuable, is a borrowed advantage,” Ramaphosa warned, noting that such access can be extended or withdrawn through decisions taken in foreign capitals.
“A regional market is different. A regional market is an advantage that we ourselves own. Others cannot take it away from us,” he said.
It is an argument with implications beyond SADC as Africa pushes ahead with continental free trade. The continent wants fewer barriers to African goods, capital and businesses. Ramaphosa’s remarks on foreign nationals raise an equally important question: how meaningful can that integration be if African people themselves continue to encounter hostility when they cross borders?
Connecting Southern Africa
Ramaphosa wants integration to be visible in the infrastructure linking SADC countries. The Maputo, North-South, Trans-Kalahari, Beira and Lobito corridors should become major routes for commerce, power, data and people rather than simply roads and railway lines.
He called for faster electricity interconnections between Angola and Namibia, Malawi and Mozambique, and Tanzania and Zambia, bringing more countries into effective power trading through the Southern African Power Pool. Harmonised regulations should also make it easier for independent power producers and transmission operators to invest across the region.
The same thinking applies to the digital economy. Ramaphosa described expensive cross-border telephone calls, remittances and bank payments as barriers that SADC countries have effectively imposed on themselves and called for seamless digital payments and lower remittance costs.
There was also a warning about Africa’s place in the emerging digital economy. “Already, we are exporting data and importing intelligence,” Ramaphosa said. African data, much like African minerals, is increasingly processed elsewhere before returning as services that Africans pay for. He called for greater investment in computing capacity, connectivity and skills so more of that value is created within the region.
From Political Freedom to Economic Freedom
Ramaphosa presented regional integration as the unfinished business of Southern Africa’s liberation. Colonialism and apartheid were defeated politically, but the economic structures that left African economies fragmented and dependent have proved harder to dismantle.
The founders of the organisation that became SADC understood that political independence without economic liberation would remain incomplete. They also understood that the countries of the region shared more than geography: they shared history, struggle and a common destiny.
Ramaphosa said Vision 2050 must now carry that mission forward. “None of our countries can achieve enduring prosperity unless prosperity is shared across the region,” he said. The vision, he insisted, cannot remain another declaration. It must influence budgets, infrastructure, skills development and institutions and deliver improvements people can actually see.
The Test Begins on South Africa’s Streets
For all the talk of critical minerals, electricity grids, industrial corridors and regional markets, Ramaphosa brought the meaning of integration back to something much more immediate: how Africans treat one another.
South Africa cannot ask its neighbours to open markets, connect infrastructure and deepen regional cooperation while foreign Africans are intimidated or discriminated against within its own communities. That contradiction was at the centre of Ramaphosa’s admission.
His message carried a reminder of history as well. Africa stood with South Africa when doing so came at enormous cost. For Ramaphosa, the solidarity that helped defeat apartheid should not be confined to history books and anniversary speeches; it should remain part of South Africa’s relationship with the rest of the continent.
The same responsibility falls on other SADC governments. Poverty, instability, conflict and governance failures continue to force Africans to leave their countries in search of security and opportunity. Ramaphosa’s preferred future is one where migration remains part of Southern Africa, but increasingly happens by choice rather than desperation.
That vision will not be measured only by agreements signed at SADC summits. It will be measured at border posts, in workplaces, in communities and in whether an African living in another African country is treated with dignity.
Ramaphosa put the contradiction in the simplest terms: “We cannot preach integration at summits and practise exclusion in our streets.”
