Xenophobia: There is no human being who is illegal

Following the anti-migrant mobilisation of June 30, QIBLA argues that no human being is illegal.

Drawing on the Quran, South African history and economic justice, the organisation calls on Muslims and all South Africans to reject xenophobia, defend migrants and confront the deeper causes of poverty and inequality.

There are days in the life of a people when we remember who we are. June 16, 1976, was such a day. The children of our country stood up and showed us South Africans at our best. They were young. They were afraid. They had no guns. But they had dignity. They had courage. They directed their anger at those with power.

And then there are days when the rot inside our society is laid bare.

June 30, 2026, will be remembered as one of those days. A day of shame. A day when some of us directed our anger not at the powerful, but at the powerless. Not at capital, but at the migrant. Not at the boardroom, but at the spaza shop. Not at those who stole our future, but at those who arrived here with nothing but hunger, fear, children, memories, and the hope that South Africa might still be a place where a human being can breathe.

Allah says in the Holy Quran:

‘Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of daybreak,
from the evil of what He has created,
from the evil of the darkness when it settles,
and from the evil of those who blow on knots,
and from the evil of an envier when he envies.’ (Sura Al-Falaq, 113:1–5)

We are cautioned that every revolution is in danger of a counter-revolution. Enemies, both external and internal, are the real outsiders to you and your country.

Shame on those who targeted undocumented migrants, intimidated mothers and fathers, vandalised the small businesses of people trying to survive, and made the poor afraid of the poor.

And blessings on those few who stood up, even in silence, to pull our humanity from the fire.

Blessings on those who gathered at St George’s Cathedral, on the solitary figures who stood on street corners and traffic circles across the country. Blessings on the trade unions that remembered the old song. Blessings on those who still know that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Because we must say this clearly, without apology and without fear: there should not be a single place on this earth where a human being is called illegal, whether in South Africa, Africa, Europe, Palestine or the Americas. Not anywhere under the sky of Allah.

Allah did not create illegal souls. Allah did not breathe into human beings and then mark some as disposable. Allah says in the Holy Quran that He honoured the children of Adam. Not the documented children of Adam. Not the passport-carrying children of Adam. Not citizens only. The children of Adam.

So, when we call a human being illegal, we are not only making a political mistake. We are entering a spiritual darkness. We are turning away from the sacred dignity that Allah placed in every person.

We must ask ourselves: how did we get here?

Xenophobia and Afrophobia did not fall from the sky. They were produced and fed by betrayal, hunger, broken municipalities, housing queues, pit toilets, overcrowded schools, clinics without medicine, hospitals that humiliate the poor, crime that stalks the working class, and politicians who speak with two tongues.

The people who march today against foreigners are the children of those who once toy-toyed in the days of the UDF. They were promised jobs, houses, education, healthcare, jobs and land. They fought for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. They were promised that freedom would not only mean the right to vote, but the right to live.

The RDP spoke to the promise of the Freedom Charter. It carried the hopes of a people after 350 years of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and apartheid.

Then came GEAR.

GEAR was an economic policy forced on South Africa without our consent, tearing the heart out of our politics. We were told to be realistic, to serve the market, to soothe investors, to comfort big business. We were told to wait for houses, education, jobs, hospitals, land, water, electricity and dignity.

While the people waited, the few enriched themselves. The old apartheid elites survived, and new black elites joined them at the trough. State enterprises meant to build wealth and jobs were looted. Tender-seeking ‘entrepreneurs’ stole in our name, speaking of transformation while making sure their own children would never know hunger.

State capture is not a victimless crime. Gangsterism, drugs, unemployment, broken schools, collapsing hospitals, underpaid workers, mothers forced to sell vegetables, sweets and vetkoek just to survive – these are the scars of theft from the state. Xenophobia and Afrophobia are the wounds of a post-apartheid state that has failed its people.

This is the minefield into which migrants from the Global South stepped. The foreigners arrived in a South Africa already wounded by the minefield.

But instead of naming those who wounded us, we turned on those bleeding beside us.

We blame foreigners for taking jobs. But who closed factories, casualised labour, destroyed bargaining power, or sits on an investment strike while towns decay? Who uses undocumented workers because of their vulnerability and fear?

We tell ourselves foreigners took our houses. But who abandoned public housing, turned land into speculation, made housing a queue, and dignity a number on a waiting list? Who allowed developers, banks and landlords to shape our lives? Who stole the money intended for RDP housing?

We say foreigners overcrowd our schools and clinics. But who underfunds public services? We have apartheid-era hospitals that are crumbling. Who made austerity our religion? Who made the market sacred and the poor disposable?

We are told foreigners are criminals. But who stole the country? Who captured the state? Who emptied municipalities? Who looted electricity, rail, water and health? Who sits in boardrooms drinking expensive whisky and champagne while poor people are taught to hate each other?

The foreigner did not inflict our pain. Our wounds were made by 350 years of settler colonialism, slavery, imperialism, apartheid and racial capitalism. South Africa cannot even speak the pain of the Khoi and the San without having a blackout. Our wounds reopened when political freedom coexisted with economic bondage. Our wounds were deepened when the RDP was replaced by GEAR. Our wounds were infected by corruption, austerity, privatisation, financialisation and the rule of big business.

The foreigner is not the cause but a scapegoat.

The enemy is exploitative capitalism.

The state protects markets better than it protects people.

The enemy is the politician who embraces the xenophobic vigilante, the employer who exploits both South Africans and migrants, the slum landlord who profits from misery, the media that normalises hatred, the party that smells elections and throws migrants into the fire, and the corporate lobbyist who whispers into the ears of parliamentary committees.

The enemy is not standing next to you in the clinic, not selling tomatoes on the corner, not carrying a child across a border, not the man who fled war or the woman who fled hunger, or the worker whose papers expired because the state itself cannot process people with dignity.

And yes, migration must be governed. No serious person denies this. Documentation matters. Labour markets must be regulated. Borders exist. The state has responsibilities. But vigilante mobs are not a migration policy. Vigilantes are not immigration officers. Marchers are not inspectors. Hatred is not governance. Fear is not law. Vandalism is not justice.

When people march to schools, clinics, hospitals, construction sites and shops to police migrants, they are marching to the wrong places with the wrong politics, against the wrong people.

These are places to organise, not to hunt migrants, but to unite workers, defend communities, expose bosses, demand documents without humiliation, fight for labour rights, and prevent politicians from using workers’ pain to justify the persecution of migrants.

This is our task.

Conscientise.

Organise.

Mobilise.

We need structures that can say to the frightened migrant: you are not alone. To say to the angry South African: your anger is righteous, but your target is wrong.

We need structures that can tell large corporations: you will not divide workers by passport, or say to the politician: you will not win elections by feeding on hatred.

We need structures that can say to the state: do your work, process people, protect people, regulate employers, prosecute violence, and stop outsourcing governance to mobs.

We need structures that can say to capital: your time is up.

Because our struggle is not merely against xenophobia. It is against the conditions that make xenophobia believable.

Our struggle is against the system that teaches Africans to fear Africans.

We do not want a South Africa where migrants are merely tolerated until the next election. We want a South Africa where every human being can stand upright.

And we must say this as Muslims.

A Muslim cannot worship Allah and dehumanise the stranger.

A Muslim cannot follow the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and join a mob against the vulnerable.

A Muslim cannot speak of the Nakba in Palestine and forget the migrant in our own land.

A Muslim cannot speak of Hajj or Hijrah and then despise the migrant.

A Muslim cannot remember Makkah and Madinah and then forget that our own sacred history is a history of migration, refuge, brotherhood and sanctuary.

Allah says in the Holy Quran:

‘And ˹remember˺ when We made the House a centre and a sanctuary for the people, saying, “Take the standing place of Ibrahim as a place of prayer.” And We entrusted Ibrahim and Ismail to purify My House for those who perform tawaf, those who stay there in devotion, and those who bow and prostrate themselves in prayer.’ (Sura Al-Baqarah, 2:125)

The Maqam Ibrahim and the Ka’bah are places of safety for whoever enters them. The masjid is a place of refuge for all migrants, from whatever place and for whatever reason. This should be the standard for all masaajid. They must be sanctuaries for refugees.

Ibrahim (AS), Hajar and Ismail were among the first migrants and refugees seeking a place of safety. Makkah became their sanctuary.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was persecuted. His companions migrated to Abyssinia, where they were welcomed. Brotherhood was established between the Muhajirun (migrants) and the Ansar (supporters). The early Muslim community was not built on passport status. It was built on faith, justice, solidarity, sacrifice and shared bread.

So where is our iman when a Malawian mother is forced to flee? How do those who run between Safa and Marwah during Hajj march against a Zimbabwean mother carrying her Ismail on her back?

Where is our salah when a Somali shopkeeper is threatened? How do we face the Ka’bah, where Ibrahim, Hajar and Ismail were once migrants?

Where is our zakah when a Zimbabwean worker is exploited?

Where is our Quran when a Congolese child is told they do not belong? The communities in the Prophet’s Madinah and the Negus’s Abyssinia were migrant communities without documents. They were hounded by the Makkan elites.

Where is our ummah when African migrants are hunted in African streets? Where is our ukhuwwah (brotherhood), ubuntu and ta’aruf (coming to know one another)?

Islam is not a decoration for our politics. Islam must be a fire in our conscience. It must burn away racism. It must burn away Afrophobia. It must burn away the arrogance of citizenship when citizenship becomes an idol. It must teach us that the earth belongs to Allah, not to Home Affairs, not to colonial borders, not to ethno-nationalist mobs, and not to the rich.

We are Muslims.

We are Africans.

We are workers.

We are people of memory.

And because we remember, we refuse to become what once oppressed us. Apartheid used papers to decide who belonged. Papers determined where we could sit and live, and whom we could love.

Colonialism used borders to divide the continent.

Capitalism uses scarcity to pit the poor against one another.

We must not continue their work. We must break it. We must tear down the border inside our hearts before we can tear down the borders in our politics.

Capitalism has drawn one real border in this world: the border between those who have and those who do not; between those who own and those who labour; between those who profit and those who bury their children; between those who fly over borders and those who drown crossing them; between those whose money moves freely and those whose bodies are stopped, searched, detained and deported.

However, capital crosses those same borders without shame. Money crosses borders without papers. Mining companies cross borders. Banks cross borders. Imperial armies cross borders. Corporations cross borders.

But when the poor cross borders to survive, suddenly the world discovers the law.

No. We reject this hypocrisy.

We reject a world where capital is free but human beings are illegal.

We reject a South Africa where white foreigners are called investors and black foreigners are called criminals; where European and Zionist genocidaire tourists are welcomed, but African migrants are hunted.

We reject the lie that our suffering will end when migrants disappear.

If every undocumented migrant left tomorrow, would the banks become kind? Would the mines return the wealth? Would landlords lower the rent? Would employers pay living wages? Would municipalities stop collapsing? Would the corrupt go to jail?

Would children in township schools suddenly receive libraries, laboratories and teachers?

Would hospitals stop humiliating the poor?

Would GEAR be buried? Would capitalism repent?

No!

The poor would still be poor. The rich would still be rich. And the demagogues would find another enemy.

Today it is migrants. Tomorrow it will be shack dwellers.

Then foreign shopkeepers.

Then Muslims.

Then women who speak too loudly.

Then workers who strike.

Then students.

Hatred never stops where it begins. That is why we must stop it now.

And we need to stand in front of our mirrors and say: we will not be cowards, for our cowardice opens spaces for thugs to attack the vulnerable.

It takes no courage to make the undocumented foreigner afraid. There is no bravery in attacking those who, when they defend themselves, are arrested and deported.

True courage is to face the capital that owns the state, the boss who exploits, the tender thief who eats on behalf of the poor, and the politician who sells your pain for votes. True courage is to refuse hatred when hatred is popularised and weaponised, and to defend the stranger when everyone else is silent.

We used to sing: an injury to one is an injury to all. Do we still remember?

Disclaimer: Qibla uses the language of xenophobia and Afrophobia for illustrative purposes only. Our preferred terminology is from the Quran: al-fuqara, al-masakin, al-ardhalun, ibn al-sabil, al-yatim, al-muhajir and al-ansar. These are the people who deserve a Quranic response. In language we frame how we see the world.

Issued by: Qibla

Contacts:

• Aziz Kader: +27 82 453 2716
• Yusuf Patel: +27 60 190 7439
• Khalid Khan: +27 84 900 6655
• Reederwaan Craayenstein: +44 7380 903464