Emma Okonji
Former South Africa’s Deputy Minister, who is currently the Chairman,
MTN Group, Mcebisi Jonas has condemned the ongoing Xenophobic crisis in South Africa, blaming the situation on the failure of the South African government.
Jonas who spoke at the funeral service of Zimbabwean-born activist and public servant, Thokozani Damasane, delivered a sweeping and unsparing condemnation of the ongoing anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa and how it is a symptom of state failure being cynically exploited by politicians with no interest in genuine solutions.
His speech, which drew on philosophy, personal memory, and sharp political analysis, circulated widely since the service and is being discussed across South African civil society as one of the most substantive interventions by a senior business figure into a crisis that has repeatedly damaged South Africa’s standing on the African continent.
Jonas told mourners that Thokozani Damasane was born and educated in Zimbabwe before relocating to South Africa during the post-apartheid transition period, to seek a home in South Africa. Jonas therefore described a home as a place where humanity is, and striving for the good of humanity, and questioned why South Africans are against foreigners in their country.
The speech’s most politically charged passage came when Jonas turned directly to the question of whether removing foreign nationals would address South Africa’s underlying socioeconomic crises and answered with a categorical no.
“Foreigners can leave tomorrow – inequality will be with us. Foreigners will leave tomorrow – unemployment will be with us. Foreigners will leave tomorrow – our police will remain corrupt. Foreigners will leave tomorrow – our politicians will still be concerned with one thing: being elected and re-elected.” he told the congregation.
Jonas who blamed the crisis squarely on the state, said: “The problem is the failure of the state. The state doesn’t manage immigration. It doesn’t manage its borders. It doesn’t enforce law enforcement. It doesn’t manage education. What are you expecting?”
Jonas also argued that such failure created fertile ground for political manipulation. According to him, “When people feel the burn, they become vulnerable to politicians whose sole purpose is to be elected and re-elected. Some of them have no credibility whatsoever. But they lead marches and tell our people that the problem is not us – it is foreigners.”
He also blamed the crisis on tribal sentiment and colonial technology, and offered a sustained historical critique of tribalism, arguing that ethnic identity and the violence it enables, is a colonial inheritance rather than an authentic African value.
“The tribe is a product of colonial powers. It is so dominant in areas where the English conquered, because they used something called the principle of indirect rule. You have got to divide these people by psychologically enhancing the notion that one is different from the other. That’s how the notion of tribe was born,” he further said.
He argued that colonial logic had mutated into the engine driving contemporary xenophobic violence, and closed with a call for what he described as a return to “national consciousness” – one rooted in continental solidarity and economic interdependence rather than ethnic exclusion.
“We are a nation embedded in Africa, and our growth and fortune are intertwined with the growth of Africa. South Africa is nothing without Africa. And Africa is nothing without South Africa,” Jonas further said.