Recent outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa have escalated into a serious crisis with fatal consequences and widespread destruction. In Mossel Bay in the Western Cape, mobs set fire to informal settlements, burning more than 50 shacks and forcing roughly 800 Mozambican residents to flee their homes. Reports indicate that some structures were lit while people were still inside, and the Mozambican government says at least five of its citizens were killed in the violence.

The horror of that presages a return to the terrible violence South Africa saw in 2008, 2015, and 2021, when rioting mobs engaged in widespread destruction. The killings that ensued were often medieval in their brutality, with people burned alive and stoned to death.

Analyses published in this newspaper have shown that a confluence of rising food and transport prices, together with cold and incitement weather, has traditionally aligned to spark such violence. So grave is the threat that countries such as Ghana and Nigeria have moved to repatriate their citizens. On the ground, the fear is palpable.

That environment calls for the greatest caution and moderation.

But into that environment, the national spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance (DA), Karabo Khakau, said the following on X:

Together with a graphic of how many immigrants had been deported under the watch of the DA’s Home Affairs Minister, Khakau wrote: “His leadership is tougher on illegal immigration and deportation than Motsoaledi’s [the former Home Affairs Minister]. This is what we want to see! Deport Minister, deport! The law is the law!”

Sources in the party say the comments are part of a deliberate campaign to see what advantage the DA can secure for itself from the tide of anti-immigrant hatred in the country ahead of the local government elections.

The DA is careful in its choice of words to stop short of open incitement to violence, but context can inform intent, and by that measure the effect is plain to see: to say that immigrants are the problem, and that they must be “removed!” (Removed! With the exclamation marks), it does not take much if you close your eyes to hear the incitement of the mob.

Even if the risks to life and property were not so serious, and even if you could divorce yourself from the fear felt by so many people cowering in poor communities as we speak and as the rumours of violent attack swirl around them, in other words, if you had no decency, the position taken by the DA is fundamentally stupid on the economics of it. You cannot deport a problem borne of the failure of South Africa’s neighbours to grow and manage their economies while denying civil rights to their people.

A proper party of decent people with a serious understanding of things would know that and would tell people that because it was true. It would not chant with the baying of the mob – even if just for the selfish fact that the DA’s voters, being essentially of the middle class, are themselves a minority that might easily be sought out by the mob in time should a precedent for that sort of thing be entertained.

The DA has been wont of late to say this newspaper, where it has criticised Geordin Hill-Lewis for lying and the party taking its voters for fools, does not understand what it takes to be successful in politics. If by that it means that this sort of behaviour is what it takes to win more votes, then we say no. It is morally wrong and an abomination before everything that is good and decent. And if the cost of being decent and honest is that the DA cannot win the next election, then let it be that way, because the price otherwise is too high. But we also think that is not true, that South Africa is a country of good and decent people, and that they will support a party that is good, decent, and honest too.