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Introduction: Through a Transnational Lens
I have been transnational all my life, born in Zimbabwe, raised in Malawi, received graduate education in Britain and Canada, and worked at eleven universities in Jamaica, Kenya, Canada, and the United States. So, I have not only experienced what it means to be a foreigner on national and racial grounds, some of it inflected and infected with various forms of xenophobia, but I have also learned how to navigate it, even overcome it. I have never allowed myself to succumb to it, or allow it to define me in my personal and professional life and values. All this is recorded in copious detail in my forthcoming autobiography, Between Books and Borders: A Transatlantic Memoir.
Across these varied contexts, I have come to appreciate how experiences of foreignness are shaped by local histories, social dynamics, and institutional cultures, and how they require resilience, adaptability, and a steady commitment to one’s own values. These cumulative encounters have given me a grounded understanding of how xenophobia manifests differently across societies while retaining a familiar emotional and structural logic. From this experience and perspective, it gives me enormous grief to see the xenophobic violence and public pronouncements in South Africa, perpetrated by angry and ignorant agitators, commentators, and firebrands in the media, especially on social media, but also by politicians and policymakers who amplify it by refusing to condemn the misinformation, misrepresentation, and myths behind the xenophobic crusade. I’ll not repeat here my previous reflections in 2008 about the root causes behind South Africa’s recurring outbursts of xenophobic crises, for little that has happened this year changes my original analysis.
Instead, in this essay, I would like to focus on the sector I know best, higher education. While I have never worked in South Africa, I have had longstanding connections with universities there as an honorary professor at two renowned institutions, given keynote addresses and public lectures at many others, and have personal friends and colleagues located at many more. On one occasion, I was the leading candidate for a vice chancellor’s position at one of South Africa’s top universities, but having turned 65 by the time of the search, the chair of the University Council (equivalent to the Board of Trustees in the United States) apologized profusely that I was age-barred and they couldn’t change the age limit. I mention this episode simply to illustrate the depth of my engagement with South African higher education and the seriousness with which I have long regarded its institutions, traditions, and contributions to the continent. It reinforced for me how deeply intertwined my own professional journey has been with South Africa’s academic landscape, even without having formally worked there.
This essay is inspired by my high regard for South African higher education institutions, respect for its historic struggles, its meaning in the pan-African imagination, my fondness for its creative industries and as a holiday venue, and recent conversations with some of my longstanding intellectual comrades, who kindly and candidly shared their views and sent me materials from the local media to read. And being from Southern Africa, South Africa has always loomed large in the region’s political economies, cultures, and social imaginaries. It is from this place of longstanding connection and regional belonging that I approach the current moment with deep concern and a commitment to contribute constructively to ongoing conversations about the future of higher education in the country.
Higher Education and the Rise of Institutional Xenophobia
My friends and colleagues, both South African and from other countries on the continent and elsewhere, are alarmed at the erosion of inclusivity at many South African universities, what one called the creeping untelevised xenophobia they have witnessed in recent years from university administrations and fellow academics. Higher education is a highly competitive space occupied by smart people with intense and sometimes insecure egos who are not averse to mobilizing, politicizing, and weaponizing extra-academic advantages and disadvantages for their own advancement. In many institutions, it’s often gender, race, or ethnicity, while in others, nationality becomes part of the calculus. We have all seen the ferocious rollback of institutional diversity, equity and inclusion in the United States for racial minorities with the rise of the MAGA movement and dismantling of the civil rights settlement. While external pressures have played a major role, many university leaders and faculty never believed in DEI, and they’re relieved and ready to pre-emptively obey and follow the diktats, directives, and diatribes of the anti-DEI crusaders even when the law doesn’t strictly require them to do so. The parallels between these contexts highlight how quickly universities can become mirrors of broader political anxieties, even when they aspire to cosmopolitan ideals.
According to my interlocutors, internationalization has been on a downward spiral in South Africa. It manifests itself in a growing reluctance and even opposition to the appointment of international academics and administrators to senior positions, and in some cases removal of university leaders from other countries. I witnessed and experienced this in Kenya. In my time there as vice chancellor, there were only two other foreign university leaders, one from Ghana and another from South Africa. There were questions, often covert, but sometimes overt, about my appointment. Such is the insidious nature of xenophobia that it stokes and reinforces prevailing internal divisions within a society, whether racial or ethnic. In Kenya, institutional leaders especially for the newer institutions that mushroomed from the 2000s and 2010s, were increasingly expected to come from the counties where the university was located, often pressured by local county leaders or parliamentarians from there. In the United States, where racial identity structures the national discourse, politics, and power, my identity as an immigrant Black man in senior administrative positions in predominantly white institutions conditioned my engagements with fellow administrators and faculty, subjecting me to a racialized gaze, aggression, questioning, and gaslighting. Thus, in my experience, xenophobia, racism, and tribalism tend to feed off each other, creating a combustible brew for universities that require commitment to academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and merit-based hiring to generate high-quality, innovative, and transformative knowledge for society, without which they become monuments to mediocrity. These experiences across three countries reveal how xenophobia rarely operates alone; it often intertwines with other forms of exclusion, producing institutional cultures that can quietly undermine excellence.
What emerges from these varied contexts is a pattern in which universities, despite their cosmopolitan ideals, can become sites where anxieties about identity, belonging, and competition are expressed through hiring practices, administrative decisions, and informal cultures. This does not mean that all institutions succumb to such pressures, but rather that higher education is uniquely vulnerable to them because of its intense professional hierarchies, its globalized labor market, and its symbolic role in national development. Universities, in other words, are both guardians of knowledge and arenas where social tensions are enacted, a duality that becomes especially visible during periods of political strain.
South Africa’s positioning as a regional hub has been eroding for some time, notwithstanding the continued dominance of some of its universities in African higher education rankings. This is evident in the declining proportion of international students. To quote Sioux McKenna writing in the Daily Maverick: “In 2010, international students made up 7.4% of university enrollments. By 2024, that figure had dropped to less than 4%. South Africa ranks 40th out of 44 OECD and partner countries in the proportion of international students enrolled at bachelor’s level. The problem is not too many foreigners in our universities. It is that the country is becoming less internationally connected.” Eruptions of xenophobic violence in the wider society, accompanied by the universities’ own diminishing commitments to internationalization, notwithstanding the rhetoric to the contrary, can only be expected to accelerate this trend, as it sends powerful signals to the SADC region, the main source of international students, and the rest of the continent and the world that foreigners, including students are not welcome on South African campuses. The symbolic cost of this decline is profound: fewer international students mean fewer intellectual exchanges, fewer collaborative networks, and fewer opportunities for South African universities to sustain their continental leadership.
The cumulative effect is a shrinking intellectual commons: fewer international students, fewer cross-border collaborations, and fewer opportunities for South African institutions to participate fully in the global knowledge economy. For a country whose universities have long served as continental leaders, this contraction carries consequences not only for institutional vitality but for South Africa’s broader regional standing. If left unaddressed, this erosion risks narrowing the country’s academic horizons at precisely the moment when global engagement is most essential.
Political Pressures, Public Narratives, and the Contest Over Internationalization
External political pressures against internationalization at South African universities are intensifying, engendered by both xenophobic vigilantes and unscrupulous and uninformed politicians. Similar pressures have led to precipitous declines in the number of international students in the Anglophone Big Four destinations of international students, Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States. In the case of the latter, there’s a growing exodus of faculty, both native born Americans and from the diasporas of other countries, fleeing the unprecedented assaults on the American research and higher education ecosystem, once an unrivaled magnet of global talent.
These global parallels underscore that South Africa’s current moment is part of a wider pattern in which higher education becomes entangled in national anxieties, political mobilization, and contested narratives about belonging.
In South Africa, university vice chancellors have been hauled before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training to explain, according to Ivor Blumenthal, “The committee’s chairperson, Tebogo Letsie, framed the issue plainly: despite substantial public investment in higher education, research development and academic support programmes over the past two decades, some institutions continue to employ a disproportionately high number of foreign academics at senior levels. Members of Parliament demanded that institutions provide verifiable evidence that no suitably qualified South African could be found before any foreign appointment is made.” It is reminiscent of university presidents being dragged before the US Congress to answer for anti-semitism on their campuses. Blumenthal argues, “That demand is long overdue. What has been happening in South Africa’s universities is not internationalization. It is institutional preference that has bypassed a substantial pool of qualified South African academic talent, sustained by procurement habits, administrative convenience, and a culture of looking outward when the solution has always been at home.”
His conclusion is adamant. “The DHET [Department of Higher Education and Training] should require all 26 public universities to submit institution-level staffing data, broken down by rank, faculty, nationality and race, within a defined and non-extendable timeframe. The aggregate national figures that have been presented to Parliament thus far are insufficient for meaningful oversight. What is needed is institution-level transparency of the kind that would allow South Africans to see, for every senior academic post at every public university, whether a South African was considered and why one was not appointed… South Africa does not have an academic talent shortage. It has an accountability shortage. The committee has begun to address it.” His argument, however, rests on a flawed equivalence between unemployed graduates and qualified academics, as though the mere possession of a degree confers the expertise required for senior academic roles, or that the unemployed graduates, let alone the rate of unemployment, would significantly diminish if the few thousand foreign academics left the country.
Other South African commentators are not so convinced. Writing in the Mail & Guardian, Nancy Dusami notes, “The data presented by the Department of Higher Education and Training suggests that the popular perception of foreign nationals dominating university employment bears little resemblance to reality. International academics constitute a relatively small proportion of the higher education workforce and are concentrated primarily in specialised fields and senior academic positions that require extensive research experience and doctoral qualifications. Many are employed in disciplines such as engineering, health sciences, information technology, and the natural sciences, where universities across the world compete for a limited pool of expertise. Others occupy senior research and supervisory roles that are critical to maintaining postgraduate education and research productivity. This is an important distinction because universities differ from most employers in the broader economy. Their purpose is not only to consume skills but to produce them through teaching, research, and the training of future academics.”
She points out that the pipeline is under stress because “Many senior academics who entered the profession during the expansion of higher education in the late 20th century are approaching retirement age, while the number of doctoral graduates entering academic careers has not increased at a pace sufficient to replace them. This has created a structural imbalance between the number of experienced academics leaving universities and the number of suitably qualified individuals available to take their place.” She insists that “Producing an academic workforce is also different from producing graduates for other sectors of the economy. Academic careers require years of postgraduate study, research training, publication, and professional development before individuals are able to supervise postgraduate students, lead research projects, or occupy senior positions in universities.” Investment in the domestic pipeline, through graduate student funding and support, and employment conditions for early career scholars, has been severely inadequate. Moreover, “South Africa’s universities operate within a global knowledge economy in which the movement of scholars across borders has become normal and, in many cases, necessary. Institutions in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa routinely recruit internationally to strengthen research capacity and expand academic collaboration. South Africa itself has benefited considerably from the networks.” Her intervention reframes the debate: the issue is not foreign academics displacing South Africans, but a stressed pipeline unable to meet the country’s research and supervisory needs.
Many academics listening to the parliamentary committee have been appalled and even alarmed by the level of ignorance displayed by the committee members about how higher education operates, almost echoing the dismay of those in the United States who followed the Congressional inquisition of university presidents after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in late 2023 that triggered widespread student protests on American campuses. As in the United States, for some politicians in South Africa, the anti-African immigrant crusade is a powerful political mobilization tool. It also provides the South African state and elites a shield against reckoning with their failures to address the deepening socioeconomic crises facing the country, reflected most graphically in astronomical youth unemployment, poor service delivery, and unrelenting inequalities. President Cyril Ramaphosa, engulfed by his own Phala Phala farm robbery or burglary scandal that threatens his hold on power, has offered equivocating public statements that fail to thread the needle between tolerance for the democratic right to public protest and protection of people and property of all residents in the country. Most crucially, he has advertently or inadvertently sanctioned the xenophobic rationale that immigrants are putting pressure on public services. In this climate, migration becomes a convenient scapegoat, obscuring deeper structural failures that demand political courage rather than political expediency.
Edwin Naidu, an education consultant, criticizes South Africa’s leaders who “frequently speak about putting South Africans first. Yet in the same breath, they continue to divide South Africans according to apartheid-era racial categories while treating foreign nationals as a single group. It is a contradiction that undermines the nation-building project our democracy was meant to advance. But blaming foreigners for systemic failures risks diverting attention from the real causes of the crisis: weak economic growth, poor governance, failing infrastructure, and inadequate education outcomes.” He laments, “More troubling is the apparent amnesia about South Africa’s own history. During apartheid, countless African countries welcomed South African exiles, activists, students, and freedom fighters. They provided sanctuary, resources, and solidarity when many South Africans faced persecution at home. That support helped sustain the liberation struggle and contributed to the democratic South Africa we enjoy today.” For him, “The key question is not whether an academic is foreign or South African. The real question is whether universities are successfully balancing excellence, transformation, and national development. These objectives are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best higher education systems in the world pursue them simultaneously. Countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States attract global talent while investing heavily in the development of domestic researchers and academics. South Africa should do the same.” His argument restores the conversation to its proper frame: excellence and transformation are not opposites but mutually reinforcing pillars of a healthy higher education system.
University leaders have largely not acquitted themselves well in this sad saga. In the words of Jonathan Jansen, a former vice chancellor and renowned higher education leader and commentator, “What is really disappointing is the silence of South African university leadership in the face of this attack on foreign academics and students; at the time of writing, only Rhodes and Nelson Mandela universities had made (bland) statements condemning anti-immigrant violence.” He calls charges that foreigners are overwhelming schools and taking jobs mythmaking, and warns that “We cannot be expected to be feted on the world stage for the superb performances of our national soccer or rugby teams, but act like thugs and haters against other citizens of the world back at home.” His critique highlights a troubling disjuncture between South Africa’s celebrated global achievements and its internal struggles with xenophobic sentiment.
The statement issued by Universities South Africa (USAf), the umbrella body for South African public higher education institutions, expressed “deep concern about the increasingly hostile discourse surrounding migration in South Africa, and the disturbing rise in acts of intimidation and vigilantism directed at ‘foreign nationals’, especially those of African descent. These developments undermine the rule of law, threaten social cohesion, and jeopardize the integrity and international standing of South Africa and its highly respected higher education system.” It reiterated “that South Africa’s Constitution protects and upholds the dignity of all who live within the country’s borders. Any form of Afrophobia, harassment, or unlawful targeting of individuals based on alleged nationality is unlawful and unacceptable and must be condemned unequivocally.” It recognized “the seriousness of the challenge of unemployment, in general, and among the youth, in particular. We acknowledge that the unemployment crisis is felt most acutely by vulnerable communities. However, it is essential to recognize that unemployment is a structural economic issue that cannot be resolved by targeting migrants.” USAf further insisted that “South Africa’s future is intertwined with that of the African continent. The country’s universities thrive when they are open, collaborative, and globally connected. Acts of Afrophobia and unlawful targeting of foreign nationals threaten not only individuals but the long-term health of the higher education system and the broader society.”
At the same time, the statement repeatedly adopted the vocabulary and assumptions that structure anti‑immigrant mobilization. It asserted that “years of corruption, economic mismanagement, the State’s failure to deliver services or stimulate economic growth, and the State’s failure to properly manage migration have all led to a serious trust deficit between the State and the citizenry,” and warned that “we now face a situation where both those who failed the people, as well as some sections of society, are turning ‘foreign’ nationals into scapegoats, blaming them for ‘taking jobs’ that should be reserved for South Africans.” It stated that “the Government has acknowledged that South Africa’s porous borders have contributed to the presence of undocumented migrants in the country,” and emphasized that “USAf recognizes the need for improved border management, stronger law enforcement, and more efficient administrative systems.” It further insisted that “it is critical to distinguish between documented and undocumented migrants. Not all foreign nationals in South Africa are undocumented, and it is unjust to treat all migrants as though they all fall into a single category,” and noted that “pictures of foreign nationals, including young children living in the streets of our cities, awaiting buses to repatriate them, are not the best representation of our country.” These passages reveal a tension between constitutional commitments to dignity and equality and a crisis‑driven administrative vocabulary that can inadvertently echo anti‑immigrant rhetoric, even when the intention is to condemn xenophobia.
South Africa’s Continental Role and the Stakes of Xenophobia
South African academic leaders and public intellectuals, as well as political and business leaders must condemn xenophobia and its peculiar incarnation in Afrophobia with political courage, moral clarity, and intellectual honesty. Too much is at stake for both South Africa and the continent. The South African economy has a large stake in continental trade and investment. According to Daniel Workman, in 2025, “almost a third (32.7%) of South African exports by value was delivered to Asian countries while 29.3% was sold to fellow African importers. South Africa shipped another 27.4% worth of goods to customers in Europe… Smaller percentages went to buyers in North America (8.6%), Oceania led by Australia (1.2%) then Latin America (0.8%), excluding Mexico but including the Caribbean.” South Africa’s trade with Asia is primarily comprised of massive raw commodity and mineral flows to China while Africa constitutes the dominant market for value-added manufactured products and agriculture. These figures illustrate a structural reality: Africa is not a peripheral market for South Africa but a central pillar of its export economy.
As for its outward investment, data from the Reserve Bank of South Africa and the International Monetary Fund show South African outward investment is highly concentrated, with Europe dominating at 60% to 65% of total capital due to tech holdings in the Netherlands and financial hubs in the UK. Africa accounts for 18% to 22%, driven by extensive retail, banking, and telecom networks in neighboring SADC states and Nigeria. North America and Asia follow at roughly 8% to 10% and 5% to 7% respectively, while Australia (1% to 2%) and South America (<1%) remain minor targets focused primarily on mining infrastructure. Sectorally, financial services and technology command over half of all outward capital, followed closely by the country’s historically dominant extractive and manufacturing conglomerates. These patterns reveal a continental investment footprint that is both deep and strategic, making regional goodwill indispensable to South Africa’s long-term economic health.
African tourism to South Africa is crucial. Tourism functions as a powerful cornerstone of the South African economy, directly generating a significant portion of national GDP and serving as a vital, labor-intensive job engine that directly employs nearly 954,000 workers. When accounting for broad indirect supply-chain multiplier effects, the industry’s total macroeconomic footprint expands to roughly 8.9% to 9% of national GDP. While domestic travel forms the bedrock of internal tourism expenditure, international arrivals have reached a milestone of 10.5 million annually, driven overwhelmingly by the African continent, which accounts for approximately three-quarters of all inbound visitors. According to Statistics South Africa, “75,2% of the tourists who arrived in South Africa in 2025 were residents of SADC countries and 1,9% were from ‘other’ African countries. These two sub-regions made up 77,1% of tourists from Africa in total. Residents of overseas countries made up 22,8% of the tourists,” led by the United Kingdom, United States of America, Germany, The Netherlands, and France in that order. Tourism, like trade and investment, is sustained by perceptions of safety, hospitality, and regional solidarity, conditions that xenophobic rhetoric and violence can rapidly erode.
South Africa operates as a critical structural anchor of continental development due to its status as Africa’s largest economy, its unparalleled industrial base, and its extensive network of intra-continental corporate investments. According to the latest database metrics from the IMF World Economic Outlook Database, South Africa sits as Africa’s top economy with a nominal GDP estimated at roughly $480 billion, outpacing regional peers like Egypt ($430 billion) and Nigeria ($377 billion). Unlike resource-dependent nations on the continent that rely mostly on exporting unrefined commodities, South Africa boasts Africa’s most sophisticated manufacturing hub, actively building and exporting advanced industrial machinery, processed chemicals, and complex commercial automobiles. This industrial dominance is backed by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the largest and most highly capitalized equity market on the continent, making the country the logical gateway for global financiers trying to deploy corporate funds into Africa. Furthermore, UNCTAD datasets highlight that South Africa is a dominant intra-continental investor, financing and building foundational consumer infrastructure across many countries through multinational retail corridors (Shoprite), telecommunication frameworks (MTN), and banking networks (Standard Bank).
This industrial and financial architecture gives South Africa a continental leadership role that is both earned and expected, and therefore vulnerable to reputational damage when xenophobic sentiment rises, which risks undermining the very regional relationships that sustain South Africa’s economic and geopolitical influence.
The relationship between South Africa and the rest of the African continent is a deeply symbiotic alliance shaped by shared history, economic interdependence, and a vital geopolitical partnership where South Africa acts as the continent’s global megaphone while the continent provides the diplomatic legitimacy it needs to lead. Historically, continental liberation movements and front-line states provided critical sanctuary and diplomatic backing to dismantle the Apartheid regime, forging a lasting bond of pan-African solidarity. Today, this strategic interdependence operates as a two-way street on the global stage: South Africa relies on collective African Union (AU) consensus to validate its foreign policy, while utilizing its influential seats at powerful tables like BRICS+ and the G20 to champion continental interests, push for UN Security Council reform, and advocate for fairer global financial architectures. Economically, the relationship is entirely intertwined, as South Africa utilizes the continent as its primary market for high-value manufactured goods, while African nations leverage South African corporate capital in telecoms, banking, and retail to build local capacity. This structural anchoring extends directly to regional security, where South Africa deploys peacekeeping troops and acts as an important mediator in conflict zones like the DRC to stabilize the very markets and borders critical to its own prosperity. In short, South Africa’s continental influence is not symbolic; it is infrastructural, economic, diplomatic, and security-driven.
Finally, this nexus is culturally and intellectually anchored through intra-continental internationalization and a shared commitment to epistemic decolonization, positioning South Africa’s leading universities and media hubs as vital engines for pan-African knowledge production. Rather than serving as conduits for Western-centric paradigms, these academic institutions actively collaborate across borders to dismantle colonial-era educational structures, center indigenous African methodologies, and build independent, localized research capacity. This intentional flow of top-tier student and professional talent creates a vibrant, cross-pollinated intellectual ecosystem that systematically reverses the brain drain outside the continent. Simultaneously, South African broadcasting and digital media hubs act as powerful soft-power vehicles that export, mirror, and validate diverse African identities on their own terms. By reclaiming the continental narrative from historical global biases, this intellectual and cultural synergy transforms the region from a passive consumer of external knowledge into an active architect of its own future. These cultural and epistemic exchanges are not ancillary; they are central to South Africa’s soft power and continental legitimacy.
These economic, political, cultural, and intellectual interdependencies reveal why xenophobia carries consequences far beyond the immediate harm it inflicts on individuals. It threatens the foundations of South Africa’s continental leadership, its economic partnerships, and its role in shaping pan-African futures. The stakes, therefore, are not merely moral but profoundly structural: xenophobia undermines the very networks that sustain South Africa’s prosperity and continental standing.
Conclusion: The Pan-African Imperative
It is tragic that xenophobia in South African society and the academy is rising at the same time that the world is undergoing profound geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts that have the potential to reposition Africa’s prospects for transformation and sustainable development. If the country and its leaders fail to contain this crisis, they risk continental isolation and the depletion of its global moral standing bequeathed by the anti-apartheid struggle. There are powerful internal and external forces that would like to see South Africa fail because of what it represents as a force against prevailing global hierarchies and hegemonies, some of which may be fueling this retrogressive resurgence of Afrophobia. Arrayed against these threats, South Africa needs all the allies and goodwill it can get on the continent, the diaspora, and elsewhere. This is a self-inflicted wound that will not only damage the country but also undermine the continent as a whole. The timing could not be more perilous, nor the consequences more far‑reaching.
For the academy, it could not have come at a worse time. When major countries around the world, from Canada to those in Europe to Asia to Australia, are busy creating well-funded programs to attract global talent from the United States seeking to escape another regime determined to sabotage itself, South Africa, indeed, much of Africa, is missing in action, preoccupied by the dangerous narcissisms of minor difference against fellow Africans within and between countries. At precisely the moment when global academic mobility is recalibrating, the continent risks turning inward, forfeiting opportunities that could strengthen its universities, research ecosystems, and future generations of scholars.
Pan-Africanism demands a lot more from the current generation of leaders, who have a historic and humanistic responsibility to educate the youth about our collective pasts, present, and futures, that we are each other’s keepers, that we will swim or sink together in the turbulent whirlwind of a rapidly changing world that threatens to further marginalize and devour the weak. The moral imperative is clear: Africa’s strength has always rested on solidarity, and its future will depend on leaders capable of defending that principle with clarity, courage, and conviction.
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This article was first published on PT Zeleza’s Newsletter
