Hostility towards foreigners in South Africa is at a higher level than at any point in the past two decades. This is according to Steven Gordon, researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

Gordon referred to the results of the South African Social Attitudes Survey, a longitudinal study undertaken by the HSRC since 2003. In 2003, some 34% of South African adults said that would welcome all immigrants, while 32% said they would accept none. The remainder said they would accept some.

While willingness to accept immigrants had declined over this period, this had accelerated around the time of the Covid pandemic. In 2021, 26% of respondents said that they would welcome all immigrants, against 30% who wanted none.

In 2025, the latest round of the survey, the proportion willing to accept all immigrants had more than halved since 2003, to 15%. Those hostile to all immigration (willing to accept no immigrants) had risen to 42%.

There were notable regional variances in the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment. These tended to those in which immigrants tended to settle – Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the proportion wanting no immigrants rose from 23% in 2021, to 45% in 2023 to 60% in 2025.

Gordon linked this to rising frustration in the province with the economy: 88% were dissatisfied with economic conditions, with similar proportions expecting them to deteriorate further in the coming five years.

And while sentiment towards immigrants had tended not to follow economic divides, there had been a marked increase in the hostility evinced by poorer people since 2021.

Gordon attributed this rise in class-based xenophobia to the scapegoating of foreigners amid acute economic deprivation, unemployment, and cost-of-living strains. Poor people are also especially vulnerable to crime. “Such problems, as experts have argued again and again, cannot be directly laid at the feet of immigrants living in the country. But it would appear that they are getting blamed anyway,” writes Gordon.

To deal with this, Gordon proposed reinvigorating the not particularly effective 2019 National Action Plan to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. Leaders in all spheres needed to speak out against xenophobia and beware of allowing immigrants to be scapegoated for social problems.

Gordon did not, however, discuss the spillover effects of hostility – sometimes with implicit political sanction – directed against such groups as political opponents, minorities. or farmers. Legitimating such hostility provides a template for doing so in other contexts.