PHOTO SUPPLIED: ACTING POLICE COMMISSIONER LT-GEN PULENG DIMPANE
IDO LEKOTA
A few weeks after the death of March and March Gauteng leader, Andile Mvuyelwa Somgxada, the police have now confirmed that a special police team has begun investigating the case. Somgxada was shot outside his home Ehurhuleni and died several days later in hospital.
On Wednesday Acting police chief Lt Gen Puleng Dimpane announced a multidisciplinary team to investigate the shooting, which she said underscored the seriousness with which the service was treating the case.
“We are committed to conducting a thorough investigation to establish the circumstances surrounding this murder and to ensure accountability,” she said.
March and March leadership has described Somgxada’s death as retaliation against the movement’s call for undocumented migrants to leave the country. The movement’s spokesperson, Sandile Dube has publicly stated that leaders of March and March, which has been organising anti-migrant demonstrations across the country, had recently received warnings or death threats.
He described the deceased’s death as “an orchestrated hitman type of killing.” He went further calling on authorities to get to the bottom of his colleague’s death and the intimidation that March and March were facing as an organisation.
Meanwhile, the public debate following Somgxada’s has exposed the brittle state of South Africa’s migration politics. On one side there are those who see March and March as an anti-immigrant, even afro-phobic formation – a perception that unfortunately is perpetuated by some of the local mainstream media and foreign news agencies.
On the other, there are those who insist that the movement reflects genuine popular frustration with undocumented migration, weak border control, pressure on public services and the state’s inability to enforce its own laws.
At another level the raging public debate has revealed something larger than one movement: South Africa’s unresolved struggle to govern migration in a humane, lawful and politically honest way. Too often, the conversation has been reduced to a false choice between defending migrants and defending citizens, when in fact both are being failed by a system that has become incapable of managing borders, service delivery, public anxieties and social cohesion at the same time.
March and March did not emerge in a vacuum. It arose in a climate of deep frustration about immigration control, pressure on public services, crime, unemployment and the wider collapse of trust in the state’s capacity to enforce rules fairly. That frustration is real, and dismissing it as mere prejudice is a mistake. But it is equally mistaken to pretend that the movement’s language, framing and mobilisation have not at times crossed into dangerous territory, where migrants are portrayed not as people with rights and vulnerabilities, but as a problem to be removed.
The government bears significant responsibility here. South Africa has for years lacked a coherent, credible and publicly trusted migration framework that can distinguish between asylum, documented labour migration, undocumented residence, criminal activity and the broader realities of regional mobility. Weak enforcement has allowed public anger to build, but so has inconsistency, corruption and the failure to communicate clearly. When the state appears absent or selective, political entrepreneurs step into the gap and transform administrative breakdown into street-level mobilisation.
At the centre of this crisis are African migrants themselves, many of whom live in profoundly precarious conditions. They are often workers, traders, caregivers, students, asylum seekers or family members trying to build ordinary lives in a continent that officially speaks the language of integration but often practises exclusion.
This is why the issue cannot be understood only as a South African domestic dispute. It sits within the broader contradiction of a continent committed to economic integration but still struggling to make freedom of movement meaningful in practice. Africa cannot speak seriously about regional markets, labour mobility and integration while creating an environment where citizens of the very continent are treated as disposable people. Nor can states pretend that integration will succeed if ordinary citizens believe their governments have surrendered control over borders, safety and public order.
Somgxada’s death should therefore be condemned without qualification. Whatever one thinks of March and March, political violence is never a legitimate answer to social anger. A killing of this kind risks deepening the cycle of fear, retaliation and mistrust, and it should prompt sober reflection rather than triumphalism or revenge.
In moments like this, the public language used by media, politicians and activists matters enormously. When communities are spoken of as invaders, parasites or enemies, violence becomes easier to rationalise.
The way forward requires more than denunciation. It requires a serious migration compact built on four pillars. First, the state must restore credible border and documentation systems, not to punish mobility but to make law meaningful.
Second, it must separate immigration enforcement from xenophobic politics by ensuring that law enforcement is disciplined, accountable and rights-based. Third, political leaders and the media must speak with precision, avoiding language that erases human dignity while still naming real governance failures.
Fourth, South Africa and the continent must treat migration as a development question, not merely a security problem, because people move when economies fail, when conflict spreads and when survival demands it.
If this debate is handled honestly, it could become an opportunity for reform. But if it is handled through moral panic, scapegoating or violence, it will only reproduce the very instability it claims to solve. South Africa does not need a politics of fear. It needs a governance framework that is firm, fair and humane, one that restores state authority without surrendering moral responsibility.