The loudest voices were quoted. The most important questions were ignored. Sandile Memela explores the questions the media coverage left unanswered.
By Sandile Memela
We have to re-examine the role and responsibilities of African media coverage of the recent 30 June protest marches in South Africa.
We have seen this happen in the 1980s. South Africa had one of the biggest concentration of foreign correspondents. It was a turbulent time.
When journalists “parachute in” to cover a story, they arrive with luggage: deadlines, editors, pre-written frames, and often very little history.
That is exactly what we have seen some senior Nigerian and Zimbabwean et al journalists do with the coverage of the March and March protests against undocumented migration and the failure of enforcement in South Africa.
It is time to say it directly: we are disappointed but not shocked. The coverage has been predictable, biased, and monotonous. It has missed the story.
The Story That Was Not Told: Accountability, Not Hatred
The core purpose of the marches, from the perspective of the organisers and the thousands who joined, was not to attack people. It was to hold the government accountable and to demand enforcement of the law.
That is the context that has been stripped out of most reports.
For years, communities have watched public services collapse under pressure. Clinics with 4-hour queues. You budget at least 8 hours to go to Bara or any public hospital. Schools with 60 learners in one classroom. Construction sites where labour law is ignored. Undocumented African labourers paid slave wages. Homes built on land with no services.
People are asking a simple question: if there are laws about immigration, work permits, and business licensing, why are they not applied?
The march was framed by its organisers as a civic action.
Memorandums were handed to schools, to municipalities, to Home Affairs, to the Presidency. To a school in January. The demand was: enforce the existing law, document who is here, and create a system that works for both citizens and documented migrants.
That demand was largely absent from international reports. Instead, the story was reduced to one word: “xenophobia.” Afrophobia. What about the Europeans? The Chinese? The Asians?
That is not journalism. That is labelling. South Africans are not necessarily xenophobic. They have for decades coexisted with legal immigrants.
The Parachute Problem: No Background, No Context
Most of the coverage we saw followed the same script:
⁕Fly in: Film the crowd, the placards, the chanting.
⁕Find one angry quote. Abahambe! Put it at the top. Make it a headline.
⁕Add a reaction quote from an NGO or a government spokesperson calling it “anti-foreigner.” And there were over 50 such under the banner of Siyafana Sonke and Muslim organisations.
⁕File. Submit a draft as final copy.
What was missing?
There was no history of how South Africa’s immigration system became backlogged. No explanation of court orders that have not been implemented. No stories of how white capitalists and families exploit and abuse illegal immigrants. No mention of the thousands of asylum applications pending for 5-8 years. No data on how many people want to go home but are stranded because African embassies cannot process documents and because there is no funded voluntary return program.
There was no question asked of the government: why has “belonging to all who live in it” been interpreted to mean no rules at all, including for those who hold fraudulent papers and do not qualify to be here? Has this not created the chaos and lawlessness?
And no government spokesperson or minister has come forward to explain this constitutional clause.
Without that background, the audience is left with a caricature instead of an understanding.
The Bias of the Frame: “Man Bites Dog” Journalism
For over six decades, much of the so-called African journalism on South Africa has pushed the same paradigm: the “man bites dog” narrative. It is black-on-black violence. Tribalism. Self-hate.
Conflict sells. And the easiest conflict to sell is: South Africa vs “the rest of Africa.”
So instead of asking hard questions, the coverage defaults to accusation. Jacinta Ngobese Zuma, the march organiser, was filmed but rarely interviewed at length about motives, about policy proposals, about what a lawful system would look like.
She has made time for one-on-ones. But these are interrogation sessions rather than curiosity, interest and efforts to trace the spark.
The media did not ask: “What would a working immigration system do for migrants themselves?” They asked: “Why do you hate foreigners?” They demand to know: who are your political allies? Are you a CIA spy funded by Israel?
That is not an interview. That is a cross-examination with a verdict already written.
At the same time, the outdated and primitive view of a “United Africa” was pushed as the only moral position. Unity is a noble goal. But unity without law, without jobs, without housing, without accountability, with failed African states becomes a slogan.
And in this coverage, that slogan only seems to apply to South Africa. Africans can only unite when they flood and gang up against South Africa. This modern and most sophisticated economy on the continent must be run to the ground to look like Nigeria.
South Africa is treated as a political orphanage for displaced Africans, with the expectation that it must absorb without question. This is while no journalist or editor asks why other African governments are not creating conditions for their own people to stay or to return with dignity.
This simply means the journalists are tame and timid in their own country. There are things they cannot say or cover.
As early as the 2000s, during Thabo Mbeki’s much-vaunted African Renaissance, local citizens expressed their unhappiness with illegal immigrants.
The African media focused on listening only to Mbeki, who was out of touch with realities on the ground.
The Accountability Gap: Who Is Being Asked Questions?
Here is what we did not see in the coverage:
⁕ No questions about the success, achievements and failures of the African Renaissance Project. How has it helped Africans to learn from their mistakes?
⁕ No questions to African governments about why thousands of their citizens are stranded and want to go back home but cannot. In fact, how did they leave their homes and countries without permission? Where are the repatriation agreements? Where is the AU plan?
⁕ No questions to the Department of Home Affairs about the backlog, the corruption in visa issuance, the porous borders. It has been an open secret that DHA is full of corrupt officials.
⁕ No questions to municipalities about why by-laws are not enforced on spaza shops, on building standards, on health compliance.
⁕ No questions to employers who benefit from cheap, undocumented labour and then disappear when there is a raid.
Instead, the camera stayed on the crowd. The implication was clear: the problem is the people marching. Not the policy vacuum that made the march inevitable.
That is a failure of purpose. Journalism should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In this case, it comforted the powerful and afflicted ordinary citizens who are asking for law enforcement.
And it was for this reason that nobody asked where R600 million suddenly came from. Where have all these police been to enforce the law? Why have they been demobilised when the problem persists? What will be the program going forward?
The Local Media Problem: Jobs & Positions Over Truth
The situation is worse with some local African journalists.
We must be honest: many are compromised. Not all, but enough to damage credibility. The pressure is real. They report to please the expectations of media owners. And many media owners have a direct interest in protecting and preserving the status quo — in advertising from government, in access, in business partnerships that rely on stability narratives.
So local reporters self-censor. They think of protecting their jobs and gaining promotion before they write without fear or favour.
The result is coverage that is even more hollow and timid than the parachute press. It repeats government talking points. Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with Phakelumthakathi. It quotes the same anti-illegal immigrants NGOs and the so-called South African Human Rights Commission. It avoids the street, the township meeting, the clinic queue where people are actually living this crisis.
This is why audiences no longer trust the news. Because they can see what is happening in their community, and then read something completely different the next day.
The New Africa Story That Is Not Being Told
There is a new Africa story that needs telling, and it is not being told.
It is the story of people who are disillusioned. People who voted for liberation and got load-shedding. People who were promised jobs and got tenders. People who believe in pan-Africanism but also believe in borders, in laws, in reciprocity.
People have had enough of political leadership that has betrayed their aspirations — both in South Africa and across the continent.
The African Union has failed to rise to the occasion. The ambassadors are here for gala dinners, long lunches and shopping sprees in Sandton.
There is no continental migration policy with teeth. No funds for reintegration. No pressure on member states to create jobs so that migration is a choice, not a survival act.
That is the real story. A governance failure at national and continental levels. But it is easier to fly in, film a march, and leave.
What Responsible Coverage Would Look Like
If the media wants to serve the public, here are some of what it must do next:
Context first. Explain the legal framework. Explain the backlogs. Explain the economic pressure on public services. Do this before you show the protest.
Ask the government hard questions. Not just “what do you think of the march,” but “what is your plan to clear the asylum backlog in 12 months?” And what will be the collaboration and contribution of African states?
Interview organisers like adults. Ask Jacinta Ngobese Zuma and others: What is your policy proposal? What happens after the memorandum? How do you plan to sustain this? Do not reduce them to a slogan. Or internal fights over who was invited to a meeting with Ramaphosa or not?
Cover migrants with dignity too. Many undocumented people are also victims of the same broken system. Tell that story. Show how lawlessness hurts them as well. Show how they were betrayed by their own governments. Ghana. Nigeria. Malawi. Somalia. Zimbabwe.
Hold the AU accountable. Where is the continental plan? Why are embassies not helping their citizens return?
Local media must choose courage. You will not get a promotion by pleasing the owners. You will gain trust by telling the truth.
Journalism Must Not Pervert Public Concerns
If the media is going to be perverted and undermine the genuine concerns and complaints of indigenous people, then it has failed in its most basic duty.
People are not marching because they hate. They are marching because they feel unheard. Very few leaders live among the people. The people feel betrayed and are gatvol. Because the law is not being applied equally. Because “it belongs to all who live in it” cannot mean “there are no rules for anyone.”
Journalism should be the bridge between that frustration and the government that must respond. Instead, too much of it has become a megaphone for one side and a mirror for the other. South Africans deserve better. Migrants deserve better.
We need African reporting that is not predictable, not biased, and not monotonous. We need reporting that tells the whole story — of law, of accountability, of a continent that must do better.
Until then, the parachutes will keep dropping, the story will keep being missed, and the trust between media and the public will keep eroding.
Sandile Memela is a well-known journalist, novelist, cultural critic, polemicist and public servant.