The South African populist, nationalist and anti-immigration group “Operation Dudula” is once more making headlines, having recently launched a campaign targeting migrant children.
By arguing that there are not enough school placements for South African children, the overtly xenophobic group has called for the exclusion of migrant children from public schools.
Operation Dudula is known for its head-turning publicity stunts. Members of the group have, for instance, blocked access to public hospitals for foreigners in the country, saying they should not use facilities funded by taxpayers’ money.
Operation Dudula’s motto — “South Africans First” — continues to attract growing numbers of people who appear to share their belief in taking the law into their own hands.
Xenophobia: A leftover of Apartheid politics
Founded in 2021 as a vigilante movement against crime and drug trafficking in the township of Soweto, just outside the country’s economic capital of Johannesburg, the populist movement even registered as a political party in 2023, but did not run in the 2024 elections in South Africa.
That year saw widespread unrest across the country, which severely impacted the economy and resulted in more than 350 deaths.
Fredson Guilengue, a project manager at the left-wing Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg, says that much of the violence at the time was blamed on foreigners, which helped the group gain momentum.
“It … joined the narrative that crime in South Africa, unemployment, and poor access to health care are related to the number of foreigners in the country,” Guilengue told DW, adding that such xenophobic attitudes are more prevalent in Johannesburg and Durban than in Cape Town.
Xenophobia is deeply rooted in South African society. Guilengue stressed that blaming migrants for problems in the country is nothing new. “Apartheid created two societies in South Africa: a white society with an abundance of security, good health, education, and prosperity. And a society of black people without rights, an unorganized society without employment, in which people had to compete for the few resources available.”
As a result, Guilengue believes that foreigners — especially those from other African countries — have become the contemporary scapegoats for South Africa’s ongoing inequalities, 31 years after the end of Apartheid rule.
Are foreigners to blame for South Africa’s unemployment?
However, South Africa’s economy is highly dependent on cheap foreign labor — especially in the face of the country’s high unemployment rate of over 33%. Foreigners often compete with locals for jobs and opportunities, but they’re also competing for the country’s resources.
This had led to accusations that foreigners are stealing jobs that should go to South Africans. Some South Africans have gone as far as accusing foreigners of “stealing” people’s wives.
According to Guilengue, Dudula merely picked up on this narrative and has spread it further, encouraging an atmosphere of discrimination and hostility toward African migrants.
Operation Dudula supporters are known for their aggressive tactics, including forcing their way into residential buildings, searching for migrants, checking their ID cards, and blocking access to public services.
“It’s really about protecting our civil rights. We are all Africans, we love our brothers and sisters, but we simply don’t appreciate how they behave in this country,” says Zandile Dabula, the leader of Operation Dudula.
“The escalating crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, that’s bad,” Dabula said, adding that someone had to stand up and save South Africa’s next generation. “We protect rather than persecute,” she told DW, rejecting the accusation that the group’s methods amount to hunting down migrants.
In her view, the group’s members only take action against people who are in South Africa illegally, as these are the people who, according to Dabula, cause widespread chaos. “People should tell us where to find them; we depend on tip-offs,” she added.
Number of foreigners in South Africa hugely exaggerated
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria published a paper in 2022, which found that many of Operation Dudula’s claims are based on exaggerations about the number and influence of foreign nationals in South Africa.
“There are about 3.95 million migrants in the country, which is about 6.5% of the population. This is in line with international standards,” the authors of the study wrote.
“The false claims that immigrants commit most crimes or overload public services are often routinely made by politicians and government officials — they reinforce this negative public sentiment,” Lizette Lancaster, one of the authors, told DW.
“This allows them [politicians and government officials] to distract from the government’s failure to provide services due to widespread corruption and mismanagement,” she added.
Research has indeed shown that immigrants do not commit more crimes than South Africans. Only about 2.3% prisoners are foreigners, according to the ISS, citing criminal justice data.
Distraction from government failure
But even some right-wing sympathizers will disagree with some of Dudula’s attention-grabbing actions, such as targeting the sick: in July, Dudula supporters refused entry to a Malawian mother of a one-year-old child to a healthcare facility.
The woman and her baby had been forcefully turned away in front of a health center in the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg by members of Operation Dudula as she could not produce a South African identity card.
Her sick child died shortly afterwards.
South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), widely perceived to be equally radical as Operation Dudula, has filed murder charges, with police confirming that they had opened investigations.
Guilengue believes that Operation Dudula benefits even from such negative press. The group wants to be noticed more in an increasingly fragmented political landscape, where it is not the only xenophobic movement.
According to his assessment, there is a “significant number of supporters in South African society who primarily blame foreigners.”
Ultimately, with the group registered as a political party, it might all boil down to gaining more power.
ISS researcher Lancaster agrees that the current popularity of the group is only exacerbated by what she calls a spike in the “toxic mix” of mistrust toward migrants and corrupt police officers who specifically target foreigners and collect bribes from them during ID checks.
However, she noted that the fringe movement poses no real threat to South Africa’s democracy. Most of Operation Dudula supporters are in urban areas in communities where there are few jobs and many socio-economic problems.
“People feel marginalized and forgotten by the government,” she says, adding confidently that “most South Africans, over 90%, do not support violence against migrants in their communities.”
Thuso Khumalo in Johannesburg contributed to this article.
Edited by: Sertan Sanderson
