South Africa’s recurring attacks on African migrants cannot be explained solely by unemployment, poverty, crime, political frustration or competition for scarce economic opportunities. Those factors undoubtedly matter. But another force deserves much greater scrutiny: the way the media reports, frames and repeatedly discusses the presence of other Africans in South Africa.
When journalism abandons context, balance and professional restraint, reportage can cease to be a neutral mirror of society and become an accelerant of social hostility. This is particularly dangerous when the subject is migration and the targets are people from other African countries who are already vulnerable to xenophobic narratives.
The concern, therefore, is not that South African journalists report crime involving foreigners. They should. The concern is what happens when individual criminal incidents are repeatedly presented through the prism of nationality, when migrants are collectively associated with crime, or when sensational language turns a complex socioeconomic problem into a convenient story of “outsiders” threatening “locals.” That is where mass communication theory becomes particularly relevant.
“Media Priming Theory” offers one of the clearest explanations of how reportage can influence public attitudes. The theory suggests that repeated exposure to particular words, images and themes activates related ideas in the minds of audiences.
If South Africans are repeatedly exposed to reports in which Nigerian, Zimbabwean, Mozambican or other African nationals are prominently identified whenever crime occurs, the nationality becomes psychologically connected with criminality. The audience may eventually begin to associate an entire national or migrant community with the behaviour of a few individuals.
The danger is subtle. A headline such as “Foreign National Arrested for Robbery” may appear harmless when considered in isolation. However, when hundreds of reports over months and years repeatedly emphasize the foreign identity of suspects, while the nationality of South African suspects receives comparatively little attention, the cumulative effect can be profoundly different. Headlines such as “Two Nigerians Arrested for Robbery” or “One Ghanaian Arrested for Stealing”, for instance, can easily reinforce negative stereotypes and become particularly inflammatory to readers, viewers or listeners, especially when the nationality of the suspects has little or no bearing on the substance of the crime being reported.
Given the foregoing style of reportage, there is no denying the fact that the audience is being primed. This is as foreignness becomes associated with danger. Migration becomes associated with insecurity. The migrant from Ghana or Nigeria becomes something to be feared rather than a human being who happens to have crossed a border.
This is where “Agenda-Setting Theory” also becomes important. The media may not tell people exactly what opinion to hold, but it has considerable influence over the issues to which they pay attention.
If crime involving foreigners receives disproportionate attention, while structural causes of South Africa’s crime crisis, weak policing, unemployment, inequality, drug abuse, inadequate social services, organized criminal networks and failures of governance, receive less sustained attention, the public conversation is inevitably distorted.
In fact, argued from the backdrop of the foregoing view, the question ceases to be, “Why is crime so deeply entrenched in South Africa?” Instead, it becomes, “Why are either Nigerians or Ghanaians bringing crime into South Africa?” That is a dangerous transformation. It shifts attention from systems to scapegoats.
“Framing Theory” takes the argument even further. The same event can be presented in dramatically different ways depending on the frame adopted by the journalist or media organization. A report can frame an undocumented migrant as a person caught in a dysfunctional immigration system. It can also frame the same person as an “illegal foreigner” threatening the country.
A news story, particularly through its screaming headline and the lead paragraph, can describe a criminal suspect as an individual accused of committing an offence. Alternatively, it can make his nationality the defining characteristic of the story. These choices matter because frames influence interpretation.
Once migrants are consistently portrayed as a collective problem rather than as individuals with different circumstances, the boundary between legitimate criticism of illegal immigration and hostility toward foreigners becomes dangerously blurred.
Even more troubling is the use of dehumanizing or inflammatory descriptions. Language that depicts groups as an “invasion,” “infestation,” “disease” or a collective threat strips individuals of their humanity and makes hostility appear socially acceptable. History demonstrates that words can prepare societies for violence.
The experience of Rwanda remains perhaps the most chilling illustration of the destructive relationship between media, propaganda and mass violence. Radio broadcasts and publications were used to demonize Tutsis and encourage hatred before and during the 1994 genocide. The lesson is not that contemporary South African journalism is equivalent to Rwandan propaganda. It is not. The lesson is that communication can create psychological conditions in which violence becomes easier to contemplate. That distinction is important.
South Africa does not need to reach the extreme circumstances of genocide before society takes irresponsible reportage seriously.
In a similar vein, “Cultivation Theory” provides another warning. The theory holds that prolonged exposure to particular media representations can gradually influence how audiences perceive reality.
If the media persistently presents foreign Africans as criminals, job stealers, drug dealers, prostitutes, undocumented entrants or economic parasites, some members of the public may eventually develop a distorted perception that these descriptions represent the majority of migrants.
The occasional report becomes a repeated narrative. The repeated narrative becomes a perception. The perception becomes a stereotype. And the stereotype can become justification for discrimination.
This is particularly dangerous in an environment where economic hardship is already creating frustration. When people are unemployed, struggling to pay rent or unable to access economic opportunities, they naturally look for explanations for their circumstances. Political actors, community leaders and media organizations can either help them understand the complexity of those problems or provide convenient targets.
In fact, blaming foreigners is easier than explaining structural unemployment. Blaming Nigerians is easier than investigating failures in policing. Blaming Zimbabweans is easier than interrogating economic policy. Blaming migrants generally is easier than examining the historical and contemporary roots of South Africa’s inequality. This is where irresponsible media framing can become a political and social weapon.
The concept of “stochastic terrorism” is also worth considering, although it must be applied carefully. It describes a situation in which repeated inflammatory rhetoric creates an environment in which acts of violence become more likely, even though no specific perpetrator or attack can be predicted.
The media organization may not explicitly instruct anyone to attack migrants. A broadcaster may never say, “Go and attack Nigerians or Ghanaians.” A newspaper may never publish such a command. But if inflammatory narratives are repeatedly circulated, if migrants are portrayed as collective threats, and if violence against them is discussed in ways that normalize or rationalize it, the cumulative communication environment can lower the psychological barriers against violence. The distinction between “reporting violence and legitimizing violence” therefore becomes critical. Journalists have a duty to report what happens. They do not have a duty to reproduce every inflammatory claim without scrutiny.
There is also the psychological phenomenon of “social deindividuation”, which helps explain how individuals can behave differently as members of a hostile crowd than they would as individuals.
Media narratives can reinforce an “us versus them” mentality: South Africans on one side, foreigners on the other. Once people begin to see migrants as a faceless collective rather than as individual human beings, moral restraint can weaken.
The Nigerian trader who has lived in Johannesburg for 15 years becomes simply “a Nigerian.” The Zimbabwean construction worker becomes “a foreigner.” The Congolese student becomes “an immigrant”, and the Ghanaian trader becomes a “amakwerekwere”.
The most common term used in South Africa for foreign nationals, particularly African immigrants, is “amakwerekwere” (singular: ikwerekwere). It is generally a derogatory and xenophobic term used to describe foreigners, especially Black African migrants from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, and Ethiopia.
There is some debate about its precise origin, but it is commonly associated with the idea that foreigners’ languages sound unintelligible to South Africans, hence the mocking characterization of their speech. Individual identities disappear behind a collective label. That is precisely how stereotypes flourish.
But there is another side to this argument that South African media organizations must confront: “journalistic responsibility is not the same thing as censorship”. The answer is not to suppress legitimate reporting about crimes committed by foreign nationals. Doing so would be equally irresponsible. Criminality has no nationality, but neither should nationality be deliberately hidden when it is legitimately relevant to a story. The solution is professional journalism. Report the crime. Name the suspect where legally and ethically appropriate. Establish the facts. Provide context. Avoid generalization. Do not transform an individual’s alleged conduct into an indictment of an entire nationality.
And, crucially, investigate whether the assumption that foreigners are disproportionately responsible for particular crimes is actually supported by evidence. This is where South African media can help rather than hurt the country.
In fact, instead of merely reporting that migrants are involved in crime, journalists should investigate the broader crime ecosystem. Who controls the criminal networks? How effective are border agencies? What is the state doing about undocumented migration? How many migrants are actually involved in serious crime? How many are law-abiding workers, entrepreneurs, professionals, students and families? What role do South African citizens play in organized criminal activities involving foreigners? Those questions produce journalism. Scapegoating does not.
There is also an uncomfortable responsibility for political leaders and public officials. The media does not operate in isolation. Politicians make statements, community leaders make accusations and interest groups promote narratives, after which the media sometimes amplifies them without adequate interrogation. Journalists must therefore resist becoming microphones for political convenience.
South Africa’s crime crisis is real. Its unemployment crisis is real. Its migration challenges are real. But turning African migrants into the face of every national problem is neither journalism nor policy. It is scapegoating. And scapegoating has consequences.
The irony is particularly painful because South Africa’s history provides perhaps the strongest possible warning about the consequences of dehumanization, racial stereotyping and collective blame. A society that knows the destructive power of prejudice should be exceptionally careful about creating new categories of people who can be collectively blamed for national frustrations.
The media has enormous power in this regard. It can inflame or calm. It can divide or explain. It can stereotype or humanize. It can amplify rumors or interrogate them. It can turn isolated incidents into national hysteria or place those incidents within their proper context. South Africa does not need less journalism. It needs better journalism.
The country’s media must therefore examine not only “what” it reports about African migrants, but “how” it reports it, “how frequently” it reports it and “what larger picture” its reporting creates in the minds of audiences.
