The Media Centre of Uganda has launched a disingenuous, state-sanctioned attack on the character of South Africans, deploying elitist tropes that deliberately conflate a genuine crisis of governance with systematic prejudice.
By Themba Khumalo
South Africa is trapped in a grinding, deeply painful socio-economic pressure cooker.
The volatile waves of protests against illegal immigration, the boiling friction over undocumented trading, and the dangerous rise of lawless vigilante groups are not random anomalies—they are the direct, chaotic symptoms of a profound governance vacuum that demands the state’s absolute, unreserved attention.
It is precisely within this vacuum of official authority that a more dangerous element takes root. There is no room for euphemism: the crude, hateful rhetoric and sporadic acts of violence require outright condemnation.
Criminal elements who weaponise genuine community anxieties to commit atrocities against foreign nationals are not activists; they are thugs who belong behind bars.
However, in an opinion piece written by Obed K. Katureebe, titled Bigotry in South Africa: It Won’t Give Them Wealth They Badly Want and published by the Uganda Media Centre on 3 July 2026, an attempt is made to analyse this crisis by deploying sweeping generalisations, historically flawed analogies, and a tone of condescension.
Read: Bigotry In South Africa
While Katureebe claims to speak from a place of Pan-African solidarity, he purposefully blurs the line between legal migration and undocumented and illegal migrants.
By labelling the demand for border control as mere xenophobia, Katureebe relies on tropes that insult ordinary South Africans, ultimately undermining the very continental unity the piece purports to champion.
To foster a genuine, constructive dialogue across the continent, we need to examine the piece’s core arguments with precision and address the realities Katureebe has overlooked.
The Realities of the Economy and Structural Exclusion
The piece heavily relies on a harmful narrative that characterises indigenous South Africans as “sleepy” and “obsessed with welfare freebies”, while contrasting them with innovative foreign nationals.
This assertion displays a profound misreading of history. The economic survival of Black people in South Africa was shaped by sheer grit during decades of brutal apartheid restrictions.
Apartheid was a system meticulously engineered by law to deny Black citizens capital, land ownership, quality education, and geographic mobility.
To then look at a population that kept itself alive through immense resilience under the wreckage of a generational economic crime and label them as lazy or unproductive is historically dishonest.
Furthermore, describing social grants as “welfare freebies” is a deeply elitist mischaracterisation. In a country grappling with a structural unemployment rate exceeding thirty per cent, these meagre grants are a globally recognised baseline net, keeping millions of human beings from absolute starvation. Weaponising a people’s poverty to question their cultural work ethic is entirely unjustified.
“Most Africans being hunted and chased do not necessarily work within the government structures. They are vibrant businessmen and women who have become so successful, hence attracted the envy of the sleepy South Africans. They are now being chased by the indigenous vigilantes, shouting all lousy nationalistic rhetoric, in order to steal their hard-earned wealth.”
Obed K. Katureebe
A Flawed Historical Parallel
Katureebe attempts to draw a historical parallel between the current grassroots tensions in South Africa and the 1972 decree by Idi Amin, which expelled the Asian population from Uganda.
This comparison is a reach too far, unravelling the moment it is held up to the light of day.
Idi Amin executed a top-down, state-sanctioned, militarised purge to seize assets and redistribute them to political allies.
The crisis in South Africa is fundamentally different. It is a bottom-up social explosion driven by a huge vacuum of good governance.
The friction in the informal trading sector is not a state-led plot to expropriate wealth; it is the tragic by-product of overstretched public resources, a struggling domestic labour market, and a collapse in border management and government regulation.
Comparing a state-ordered military purge to a complex socio-economic pressure cooker is a massive leap in logic.
Confusing Market Regulation with Xenophobia
The piece heavily criticises the anger surrounding undocumented trading, framing the call for stricter regulation as “lousy nationalistic rhetoric”.
Every sovereign nation on earth—including Uganda—has a fundamental duty to regulate its domestic markets, enforce labour laws, and monitor its borders. Expecting compliance with sovereign legislation, fair labour practices, and immigration laws is not bigotry; it is the bare minimum requirement for a functional society.
The core grievance of the vast majority of South African protesters is not directed at migrants who enter legally and contribute within the framework of the law; it is explicitly directed against illegal immigration.
When a state fails to regulate the economy and secure its borders, it creates an unpoliced environment in which desperate people are left to compete for survival.
This lawless environment ultimately harms everyone, most notably the legal, documented migrants who are left vulnerable because the rule of law has broken down.
Demanding order is a matter of state functionality, not prejudice.
The Self-Defeating Path to Pan-Africanism
The greatest irony of the article is that it is hosted on an official government platform, the Uganda Media Centre, while claiming to advocate for Pan-Africanism and economic transformation.
Pan-Africanism cannot be built on a foundation of condescension. It is an idiom of partnership, requiring sister states to speak to one another with mutual respect.
When an official organ of a government on the continent publishes sweeping insults about the character of another nation’s people, it does not build bridges; it burns them.
One cannot foster “unity in diversity” by using elitist tropes that alienate the very population one seeks to unite with. This approach is diplomatically short-sighted and actively poisons continental solidarity.
In the end…
There is no justification for xenophobic violence. The thugs who attack foreign nationals destroy lives and tarnish the image of South Africa.
However, conflating a legitimate civic demand for legal immigration control in the country with mindless bigotry is intellectually lazy.
True Pan-African solidarity requires nations to examine structural breakdowns with empathy and shared accountability.
We must address broken borders, regional economic instability, and governance failures together, rather than throwing stones from across the continent.