Professor Loren Landau Critiques State's Role in Linking Immigration to South Africa's Social Issues

GAUTENG— The state is now complicit in naturalising the association between immigration and social ills. This is according to Professor Loren Landau, who spoke to Briefly News about the 30 June 2026 shutdown organised by March and March.

Landau, the South African Research Chair in Mobility and the Politics of Difference at the African Centre for Migration and Society, said the state has linked immigration directly to water shortages, crime, unemployment, and insecurity. Furthermore, a failure to investigate past threats and violence has entrenched and amplified bullying and thuggery as fundamental governance practice.

Professor Landau criticises government's approach

"The state is now complicit in naturalising the association between immigration and social ills: water, crime, unemployment, insecurity etc," Landau told Briefly News. He explained that because the government has effectively endorsed the core messages of vigilantes, the state is now hamstrung.

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The 30 June deadline represents a possible inflection point for the movement and for South African politics more generally. Because the state has normalized these narratives, it faces a severe political dilemma. Landau said that if authorities publicly rebuke the movements, citizens will view them as hypocrites who are out of touch with popular opinion. Conversely, if the government chooses to do nothing, it effectively surrenders its authority and the power to set the political agenda. This inaction hands control over to an unaccountable and shadowy set of actors who are willing to use unchecked violence to pursue their agenda.

Goverment must show authority: Landau

To regain control, Landau noted that the state will need to show it has the will, power, and authority to protect South Africa from what has been framed as a demonic threat. This means the government will be forced to implement massive immigration enforcement. Years ago, a colleague, Tamlyn Monson, described vigilantism as furthering three legal agendas. For some participants, it was about enforcing existing laws. For others, it was about breaking laws to cause chaos, looting, and self-enrichment.

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Landau told Briefly News that the third group includes those who use the language of laws to forge an alternative order.

"That is what we now see," Landau said. "People appropriating the rhetoric of law enforcement to reshape who is allowed to access space, jobs, and services."

More importantly, Landau noted that this process reassigns responsibility for making those determinations. It is usurping state sovereignty and reinforcing alternative governance regimes that are already in place.

What is required to fix the issue?

What is required now to fix this situation is strong and self-aware leadership. This leadership does not need to translate into broad pro-immigration statements. Landau said that such public declarations will read as hypocritical and will further entrench public distrust. Instead, leadership is about quietly investigating and disassembling the movements. The state must hold leaders accountable for tax evasion, violence, and hosting illegal gatherings.

This specific operational strategy can be conducted under the radar. Landau told Briefly News that executing these targeted law enforcement actions would effectively make these vigilante movements disappear. Once these networks are dismantled, the state can then pivot publicly. It can purge incompetence from its ranks and offer concrete proposals for systemic change.

Source: Briefly News