South Africa is approaching the fifth anniversary of the deadly July 2021 riots and looting in an atmosphere that is again heavily laden with the threat of violence.

It’s a fog made denser by the confluence of unemployment and poverty with conspiracy theories that lay the blame for those miserable conditions largely on foreign nationals.

Such scapegoating is in no way unique to South Africa, with the issue of migration having emerged as a theme shaping politics, and at times fuelling violence, in many countries.

What is clear, though, is that attitudes domestically have hardened, especially since the Covid pandemic.

The Human Sciences Research Council’s most recent South African Social Attitudes Survey, published in May, confirms that the South African public has become considerably more antagonistic to foreign nationals, with hostility towards immigrants recorded in 2025 at its highest-ever level since the start of measurement.

This rise in hostility is attributed largely to the increasing perception of immigrants as an economic threat; an assessment that is also reflected in a recent South African Council of Churches (SACC) pastoral letter on the issue.

Besides competition for jobs, the SACC also lists other grievances, including perceptions that foreign nationals are disproportionately involved in crime, especially the drugs trade, that foreign nationals sell unsafe food, and that they are securing business permits illegally.

The letter says the deep frustration and sense of abandonment being expressed is real and must be listened to. However, it concludes that the anger towards foreigners is misdirected and misplaced.

Instead, the root causes are attributed to a lack of law enforcement and border management, ongoing corruption, the poor state of service delivery and education, as well as political and economic factors in the region that continue to push people to migrate.

Importantly, the church leaders also highlight the role of false information, spread largely through social media, in fuelling the anger that sometimes leads to violence.

Here, the similarities with the 2021 riots are unmistakable, with social media having served as a key mobilisation tool, as well as to create the perception that people could take whatever they wanted without repercussions.

While it’s important to assemble evidence on who is behind these social media campaigns, there are strong indications that some of the groups that were involved in the deadly events of 2021 are also involved with the current mobilisation against immigrants.

What is also increasingly clear is that certain political parties view the prevailing mood as a rich vein to be mined.

South Africa should, thus, not be surprised if the type of populist politics and rhetoric that is proving politically successful elsewhere gains momentum domestically.

These populist forces are likely to extend their gaze beyond migration, which will remain a bedrock issue, and start attacking many other aspects of the Constitution that they view as a hinderance to their extreme nationalistic vision.

These attacks will fuel division and resentment, sow confusion and could, ultimately, even threatened this democracy.