The numbers for June 30 are modest: 120 marches, surprisingly little violence, some pan-African blowback, and only 1% of foreigners leave the country. I sampled some more reflective podcast opinions, adding a human touch.
“Migration is a natural and adventurous quality of being human. Migration, in or out, has always enriched societies. The curious, the ambitious, and the brave migrate.” Leon Louw was talking on ‘Through the Liberty Lens’, a podcast of the Freedom Foundation. “The first undocumented emigrants left the Cradle of Mankind 100,000 years ago. Many generations later, some of their descendants are coming back to the area, and now we are getting upset about it. It’s quite wonderful, actually.”
The show has a refreshing format, as it is hosted by Tom London, a popular broadcaster.
London, who is a boyish figure with his unkempt hair and casual outfit, cuts a delightful contrast to the stiff and angry hosts of the centre-right podcast space. Louw has his own flair when talking to the general public about complicated issues, and the content is accessible and relaxed.
They suggested that the June 30 protests should be considered a flop, judging by how poorly the ‘mass’ demonstrations and violence turned out. Explanations for this include that South Africans realise they need foreigners to pay rent in their back rooms, to buy goods from their spazas, to work in their gardens, and to drive their Ubers.
Moreover, people realise they should be angry at the government, not the foreigners. Louw pointed out that our immigration figures are quite low, and even if the accusation that “the foreigners are taking South African jobs” is true, the effect is minuscule. “Do the maths. Foreigners and immigrants have throughout history added more to economies than they have taken.”
Louw takes a firm free-market stand on economic issues. Tom reminisced about when he was younger and how the Portuguese, Italian, and Greeks were the immigrants urged to ‘go home’. These days he walks to his small supermarket up the road, which is run by a Bangladeshi family. They know each other by name. They invite him for meals to thank him for being a loyal customer. “Tommy boy, here is a plate of biryani,” they say, and they break some bread together.
I am not sure what it was, but these two men in this format achieved something unusual: they made me feel better about being in South Africa. Perhaps it was the tone in which they spoke, or the vocabulary, which never talked about ‘black’ and ‘white’ and had none of the rage-baiting and ‘up its own arsery’ that defines much of the podcast space. For that, I am truly grateful.
We go from vast extrapolations reaching back to the dawn of mankind to an intense interpolation from the vantage point of a tiny town called Van Wyksdorp in the Klein Karoo.
In a remarkable reading, Alec Hogg of BizNews narrates a missive from best-selling author Rian Malan, a resident of the town. It is like watching a favourite uncle reading a bedtime story, but there are no princes or rainbows, only Malawians accompanied by dark clouds on the horizon.
Hogg’s voice lilts and his head tilts as he interprets Malan’s account of how a boom in the construction industry brought the immigration issue into the spotlight. Jobs exploded, but so did the Malawian population, outnumbering the coloureds by 3 to 1, according to a local source.
That’s where the trouble started. Malan tells the story from all the available angles, and concludes: “I know you believe in market forces and the magical transformations that result when they are allowed to operate freely. I do too or did until recently.”
Malan worked out how much money the construction boom should have added to the local economy.
“Assuming my calculations are correct, the R500 million that has flooded into this district in the last eight years should have lifted all boats, including those of the coloureds. In theory, the boom should have stimulated demand for labour, which should have pushed wages inexorably higher. But that hasn’t happened, thanks almost entirely to uncontrolled immigration.”
Malan says the local coloured population is languishing and unsure who to vote for, as is Malan, who covers all his bases: “I started as a gormless leftist, graduated to the militant centre, and these days neighbours know me as a bullshitter who talks right but behaves left.”
His pinko progressivism is seemingly indicated by his giving the coloured dronkies who come to his gate a tin of baked beans or a kind word per occasion. Malan ends by wishing all well on the eve of the great march. Unca Alec softens his voice, and reads it as one would a Christmas carol. And it was the night before June 30, and all through the land, people held their breath and held one another’s hands.
June 30 seemed to pass with a drumroll and a fizzle, while deeper structural problems sizzle.
Podcaster and commentator Mighti Jamie gave the boykies no biryani, and the coloureds got no baked beans. In a legal analysis he did for SMWX during an immigration flashpoint, he asked us to stay away from sentimentality and stick to the facts when dealing with this sensitive issue.
Mighti is a Zimbabwean-born lawyer and international debating champion. He explained that a cornerstone of international law regarding refugees is the principle of non-refoulement. “It means you can’t just send people back to the country they just came from if they have a legitimate fear of persecution.
“Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, refugees have the right to work, education, plus the right to access public relief and freedom of movement within the country. Refugees do not have to be formally documented to count as refugees, but there are pathways available to them to become citizens”.
He said that the highest number of immigrants in South Africa came from Mozambique and Zimbabwe, due to people fleeing the civil wars and collapse of democracy there. Mighti asks us to be clear when we talk about undocumented foreigners, whether they count as economic migrants or refugees. The Constitutional Court upholds even foreigners’ right to the dignity of work and marriage.
In a white paper on immigration, then Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi applied to have the Refugee Act overturned, especially the rule of non-refoulement and the right to work.
Mighti then references the book by Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents. Fukuyama posits that democracy and classical liberalism are centred around tolerance, equality, and seeing each other as human beings. He says democracies do best when they embrace diversity, including in the form of foreign nationals. He makes the case that when you have diversification, you have better economic outcomes in a country.
Note: On 7 July 2026, a week after the June 30 anti-immigration protests, the Constitutional Court of South Africa made a landmark ruling. It upheld refugees’ right to non-refoulement, and confirmed that asylum seekers cannot be denied access to the system or deported merely for lacking a valid transit visa.
Podcast report street survey
In my area in Cape Town, usually ablaze with WhatsApp messages when the local squatter camp gets rambunctious on pay day, it was quiet on June 30.
According to the CPF: “No reports (of unrest) anywhere on the peninsula. The N1 was closed due to an overturned tanker, but it has been reopened”.
We have a lot of homeless people in the area. I call them urban pioneers. Others call them ‘bergies’. They consider themselves foreigners, or ‘uitlanders’; a group of displaced humans who don’t fit in anywhere, so they take their meagre belongings and live a nomadic lifestyle, feeding off dustbin treasures and donations. Their hope is that the mayor provides housing for them.
On the other side of the Atlantic is a friend. There are recent migrants to the US under the Afrikaner refugee programme. They were not happy with the crappy motel they were placed in under the programme, and demanded a proper hotel, which was granted. Similar complaints were lodged about the pocket money and cell phones they were given. The food was apparently also not excellent. Further, they insisted on going to a state of their choice, to be closer to their family, and not to the one the programme allocated to them,. They are now living comfortably with their families, who did not really volunteer to sponsor them, and have attended their first rodeo, swapping mielies for corn on the cob and trading velskoens for cowboy hats.
Viva!
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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