When undocumented migrant workers spend years in employment yet remain in shacks with no savings, no contracts and no dignity, something is fundamentally broken. Sandile Memela examines the uncomfortable relationship between illegal immigration, labour exploitation, employer greed and the selective outrage that follows when immigration laws are finally enforced.
By Sandile Memela
We need a new language to describe something many South Africans have seen but could not name.
The privileged — both black and white — have offered prayers and raised their hands and voices to the heavens, asking God to save undocumented immigrants.
They have been removed from communities where they had lived for years and taken to detention centres. They are now “going home”.
The responses from the anti-illegal-immigration movements were immediate: How can it be normal for an undocumented person to live and work in the country for years and still remain poor?
That question is not about one family, factory or farm. It is about a pattern. It is about the callousness of African states…a two-faced attitude driven by greed and convenience that cuts across race, class and sector.
And when we do not name it, it hardens into what people are now calling “volunteer slavery of the undocumented” — work without progress, without dignity and without legal protection.
In a country already scarred by race, class and inequality, illegal immigration makes that wound deeper because it exposes who benefits, who pays, and who pretends not to see.
Profit Without Progress
There are things that make the plight of undocumented immigrants arouse impatience and anger.
Nothing to show for years of labour.
If a person — an illegal immigrant or undocumented migrant — works full time for years and still lives in a shack, still wears the same clothes, and still has no savings, then that was not a wage. It was a survival allowance.
Wages are supposed to move a life forward. These did not.
Some of us are products of the poor working class. We know the suffering and misery.
The contrast of two worlds.
We see spotless bakkies. Leather couches. Stanley Cups. Woolworths bags. Next to workers living in poverty. The business grows. The workers do not. That picture breaks something in people because it tells the truth without words.
“My favourite workers.”
That phrase reveals the trick. A personal relationship was used to keep them loyal. But no legal relationship was used to protect them. No contract. No UIF. No pay rise. Just “favourite”.
This is not confined to farms. You see it with domestic workers in Sandton. Builders on estates in Midrand. Waiters in Cape Town restaurants. Cleaners in Durban malls. Packing staff in retail chains. Nurses in private clinics paid in cash.
The formula is the same: keep African labour cheap, keep it quiet, and call it “helping”.
The Two Faces: Greed In Private, Humanity In Public
This is the core of it—the two-faced attitude.
In private, the law is ignored for convenience.
Hire people without permits because they are vulnerable. Vulnerable workers do not go to the CCMA. They do not ask for contracts. They do not report R800 for a 60-hour week. They are grateful for “a job”.
The employer tells themselves: “At least you have a job.”
That is not charity. That is a business model built on legal vulnerability. It is exploitation.
When your business makes millions and the person making it possible cannot afford rent, you are not employing. You are extracting. This is abusive exploitation. You are using their fear of deportation as leverage to pay less.
In public, when the law is enforced, it becomes a “humanitarian crisis”.
The same people, or their peers, post prayers and phone into radio talk shows. They unleash human rights campaigns. They cry about children in the rain. They call March and March “xenophobic”. They point at the shacks and say, “Look how cruel this is.”
But they never ask: Who created the conditions for that shack? Who benefits from slave wages?
Who paid wages that could never buy a brick? Who kept someone for five to ten years and never moved them one step forward? Or never advised them to obtain proper papers.
That is selfishness. Use the person when the law is loose. Mourn the person when the law is applied.
It is goody-goody in public. Greedy in private.
Why We Call It “Volunteer Slavery”
Slavery was forced labour, with no pay and no choice. “Volunteer slavery” is different, but it rhymes.
No legal status = no bargaining power.
The worker “volunteers” to accept abuse because the alternative is deportation or returning home with nothing. Consent given under threat is not genuine consent.
No upward mobility.
Five to ten years. No UIF. No skills training. No improvement in housing. No savings. The job is a treadmill. You run, the family stays warm, the factory makes money, the farm grows, yet you remain exactly where you started.
Moral cover.
“They are like family.” “Siyafana Sonke. We are all Africans.” “At least they have shelter and food.”
That language hides an economic relationship. It turns an employer into a saviour and the worker into a charity case.
This is what the anti-illegal-immigration marches are really saying: if your business prospers, the people who built it must, first, be in the country legally.
Netcare nurses must live in better homes. Packers at Woolworths or Checkers must be able to afford decent housing. Farm workers must not live in shacks next to a farmhouse with a swimming pool and a jacuzzi.
If your profit depends on their labour, their lives should improve alongside yours. That is not radical. It is basic decency.
The Race Trap: This Is About Class, Not Just Colour
It is true that white people largely own many of the mines, farms, factories and affluent homes. But this is neither an attempt to single out white people nor to play the race card. Yes, there are many white employers who have done this.
But there are also black business owners who underpay Zimbabweans in the construction industry. Indian restaurant owners who pay workers cash in hand. Coloured contractors who keep Mozambicans off the books.
To make this only about race lets the real problem off the hook: greed.
Xenophobia is real and must be condemned. People have been attacked, killed and scapegoated. That is a crime.
But class exploitation is also real. When we reduce everything to “white versus black”, or Black versus Black, we miss the real engine: the imbalance of power between employer and employee, and the failure to enforce the law.
Race and class are often the language we use to describe it. Greed is the fuel that keeps it running.
Illegal immigration makes this even worse because it adds another layer. It deepens South Africa’s racial divisions. It becomes: “foreigners are taking jobs” versus “you are exploiting foreigners”.
Both can be true at the same time. And the privileged few who run capitalist-sponsored NGOs benefit from both arguments remaining loud.
Who Benefited? The Privileged Few
Let us name them.
The farmer who pays R800 and sells produce at Woolworths prices.
The restaurant owner who saves R50,000 a month by failing to register staff.
The estate developer who finishes six months early because undocumented labourers work 12-hour days.
The domestic employer who says, “She’s part of the family”, but pays her less than the gardener.
They benefit directly. Then they go on radio or Facebook and speak about “human rights” and “dignity”. Siyafana Sonke releases media statements and appears across radio and television.
That is the two-faced attitude. Private exploitation. Public compassion.
It is the same as companies that announce billion-rand profits and then ask government for tax breaks “to create jobs”. The jobs are created. The people remain poor.
The Law, The Back Pay, And The Way Forward
The anger over what also happens to undocumented immigrants is justified. Years of working for peanuts is not “a little help”. It is a life of sacrifice.
If we are serious, this is what justice looks like. Not pity. The law.
Enforce the law on employers first
Raids cannot target only workers. March and March must not take the law into their own hands. They should either participate in joint audits or act purely as observers alongside Home Affairs, the Department of Employment and Labour, and the South African Police Service.
●Fine businesses that employ undocumented immigrants.
●Publish the names of repeat offenders.
●Create a back pay fund. If someone worked for five to ten years without a contract, calculate what they lost and establish a process for claiming it.
When it costs more to break the law than to obey it, behaviour changes.
Regularise status so exploitation stops
People cannot demand their rights if they fear arrest.
●Fast, transparent work permits for sectors that genuinely require labour: agriculture, hospitality and construction.
●A firewall: if an undocumented worker reports abuse, they should not automatically be deported. The employer should be investigated first.
●UIF and COIDA for all workers. If you contribute labour, you contribute to the system, and the system should protect you.
Regularisation removes the excuse: “I can pay you less because you do not have papers.”
Tie profit to living standards
Why can the family home or farmhouse be renovated while the worker’s room remains a squalid shack?
Sector agreements in agriculture, retail and healthcare must include minimum housing and transport standards as part of licensing.
Tax incentives: businesses that provide decent accommodation or housing subsidies should receive relief.
Public pressure: companies that post record profits while their workers live in poverty must answer to consumers and shareholders.
Stop using humanity as a shield
We can do two things at once: enforce immigration law and, at the same time, treat people with dignity.
That means no children standing in the rain during raids. It means social workers must be present. It means shelters, not cages.
But it also means we stop calling five to ten years in a shack “kindness”. It was not. It was cheap labour.
The Hard Truth About March and March
This is why March and March has resonated.
It is not only about undocumented or “illegal” immigrants. It is about a state and an economy that allowed this to become normal.
It is about communities watching public services collapse while employers enrich themselves through unprotected labour. It is about South Africans and documented migrants competing for R80 a day. It is about the feeling that the law applies only to the poor.
When government fails to enforce the law, people enforce their frustration. Sometimes through marches. Sometimes through violence. Both are symptoms of the same failure: the state outsourced its responsibility to employers, and employers outsourced their conscience to Facebook prayers and the Human Rights Commission.
From Pity To Justice
Cries for human rights and prayers do not pay rent. They do not buy school shoes. They do not build a house.
Justice looks like this:
Back pay calculated and paid. If you benefited from someone’s labour for five to ten years, you owe them five to ten years.
Employers who broke labour law prosecuted, regardless of race.
Workers given a pathway — either to legal status with rights or to assisted voluntary return with dignity.
A new standard: if you profit from someone’s labour, their life must improve while they are working for you.
We cannot call it “slavery” and then hire the next two men under the same conditions the following month.
We cannot post about exhausted workers and then complain when people demand enforcement.
The rule must be simple: my helper must have more because I have more. My worker must live better because my business has done better.
That is not charity.
That is not xenophobia.
That is what a lawful, decent economy looks like.
And until we get there, the two faces will remain: greed behind closed doors, and public calls for human rights.
Sandile Memela is a veteran journalist, novelist, cultural critic, polemicist and public servant.