Fort Hare University: Lies and xenophobia distract from the jobs crisis

Mail & Guardian

21-05-2025

Fort Hare University, along with the Centre University of Technology, Free State, has been subjected to xenophobia accusations spread on social media. Photo: Supplied
In the digital age, disinformation spreads faster than truth and when it cloaks itself in nationalism, the results can be toxic.
In recent weeks, South Africa has witnessed a troubling convergence of events stoking xenophobic sentiment in the higher education sector. While MPs raised questions about the appointment of a foreign national to a senior position at the
Though the two incidents are distinct, their timing has fed into a broader, dangerous narrative that scapegoats foreign academics for the structural failings of South Africa's labour market.
This past week, a fabricated list naming supposed 'foreigners' in senior posts at the University of Fort Hare sparked xenophobic outrage online. Despite the university's
The jobs crisis: Neoliberalism's legacy since 1996
To understand the current scapegoating of migrants, we must return to the government's 1996 shift to neoliberal economic policy through the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy. Marketed as a plan to stabilise the economy and attract investment, Gear 1996 effectively abandoned the Reconstruction and Development Programme's (RDP) redistributive ambitions. In practice, Gear slashed public sector employment growth, reduced state intervention in the economy and privatised key assets contributing significantly to the collapse of local industries and job losses.
The consequences are plain today. South Africa's unemployment rate as of 2025 sits at about 32.1%, if we go with the narrow official unemployment rate, which looks at people actively looking for work and are available to work. The expanded broad unemployment rate, which includes discouraged job seekers, sits at about 41.1%.
The broad unemployment rate reflects the realities of South Africa today. That almost half of South Africans who are able to work, want to work and those who have given up on the hopes of finding work are unemployed.
These are not the outcomes of an invasion of foreign workers, they are the legacy of a political class that outsourced development to the market and walked away from industrial planning and job creation. Yet instead of interrogating this economic betrayal, opportunists both in parliament and online have opted for the easier path: scapegoating.
Contrary to the narrative that foreigners are 'stealing jobs', the data tells a very different story. According to Statistics South Africa and international estimates, foreign nationals make up only about
Even among those in the formal economy, international employees are not the driving force behind job losses.
In the higher education sector, where qualifications and global collaboration are critical, foreign nationals are often recruited specifically for their niche skills and research expertise. The University of Fort Hare, for example, reported that In 2024, it initiated a comprehensive organisational redesign to strengthen their academic mission. A total of 87 priority academic positions were identified and advertised, and 37 appointment letters were issued, all to South African scholars. For 2025, a further 59 posts were identified and are either currently being filled or advertised.
Once filled, the institution said this would bring them closer to a 15% target of international academic staff and 85 South African nationals in line with best practices of establishments of higher education in emerging markets.
To claim that this small demographic is blocking South Africans from employment is to confuse anecdote with analysis, and ideology with evidence.
A manufactured moral panic
What makes the xenophobic attack on Fort Hare so egregious is its complete detachment from institutional reality. The viral list circulated online contained names of people who no longer work at the university, never worked there or had already retired years ago. The university's official response debunked the list entirely, pointing out that its hiring policies follow South African labour law to the letter.
Furthermore, the idea that universities are circumventing immigration law or encouraging 'illegal' migration is absurd. Universities are not immigration authorities and must abide by department of home affairs regulations when hiring foreign nationals.
Yet this disinformation campaign gained traction, not because it was credible, but because it tapped into an existing undercurrent of resentment and nationalism, fuelled by real economic pain. Populist politicians and influencers exploit this pain not instead of healing it, they weaponise it offering a moral panic as a substitute for a political programme. But the higher education sector is not the enemy.
Universities have suffered from austerity, budget cuts and declining public investment. It was at the beginning of the year when the same social media platforms showed the difference between the number of students with bachelor passes from their matric who applied to universities versus the number of applicants the universities across South Africa could actually accept given space constraints.
There is a desperate need for the state to invest in more higher education institutions. They are being asked to do more with less: produce world-class research, grow student numbers and maintain international standards, all while salaries are frozen and staff are overburdened. Under such constraints, foreign scholars often take on work that locals avoid because of underpay, relocation or administrative burdens.
Moreover, South African academics are increasingly leaving the country for better opportunities abroad particularly in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Thus, demonising those who stay, or who arrive to contribute to our institutions, is self-defeating and irrational.
Solutions: Economic reconstruction, not ethnic blame
What we're witnessing is not new. South Africa has a long and violent history of xenophobic scapegoating, from the 2008 riots to the more recent Operation Dudula campaign. What is new is the growing complicity of political elites in fuelling these flames under the guise of 'patriotism' or 'transformation'.
This is dangerous. It erodes social cohesion, distracts from the real issues and weakens the working class by dividing it. It also undermines South Africa's standing as a regional leader and progressive democracy. A country that attacks migrants for political gain cannot credibly claim to stand for Pan-Africanism, solidarity or justice. Blaming foreign nationals is not only analytically false it is morally bankrupt.
If MPs and social commentators are truly concerned about unemployment, there are better ways to do so. Why isn't there a dedicated parliament committee investigating the Gear promise of 1996, where are the jobs the state is meant to be producing, the state being the biggest employer in the country, biggest landowner in the country?
South Africa must reimagine a developmental path that focuses on: public-led job creation through expanded infrastructure, social services and industrial policy. As we speak right now a part of the country is obsessed with the effect of artificial intelligence technologies, and the rush into the fourth industrial revolution, yet the other part of the country is experiencing deindustrialisation, which causes unemployment, and incomplete phases of past industrial revolutions specifically the second and third industrial revolution.
Job creation under such economic conditions will not be an easy task even if South Africa only had well wishing politicians. There is a growing need for support for informal workers and small traders, both migrants and locals working side by side.
A need for investments in skills training, technical education and green economy industries; worker protections that promote decent work for all, regardless of origin; and a regional migration policy that treats migrants as contributors, not criminals.
It is also time to revisit and critique the neoliberal consensus itself. Gear and its successors have failed to produce growth with equity. This was inevitable. New thinking must emerge that places redistribution, democratic planning and solidarity at the centre of economic policy. This is not naive idealism; it is the only path left if we are to avoid further instability, resentment and reaction.
South Africa's jobs crisis is not a foreign problem, it is a domestic failure. It is the result of policy decisions that privileged capital over people, profits over livelihoods and market logic over justice.
The enemies of progress right now are disinformation, austerity and the political cowardice that refuses to name the real culprits: decades of failed economic policy, elite enrichment and state neglect.
Leroy Maisiri is a researcher and educator focused on labour, social movements and emancipatory politics in Southern Africa, with teaching and publishing experience in industrial economic sociology.