This week, South Africa has been rocked by protests that have caught the world’s attention. These have been led by anti-immigration civic groups campaigning against what they describe as a crisis of illegal immigration. But to understand these protests, it’s key to view them as part of a broader conservative nationalist turn, as has been seen across countries in the west.
For the past two months, these groups have marched through townships and city centres demanding identity documents from African foreign nationals, ordering non-citizens to close their businesses and calling on undocumented migrants to vacate the country. They declared 30 June as the deadline for immigrants to leave and as the date of a nationwide shutdown.
