It's a Lie That Crime in South Africa is Being Committed by Foreigners Alone

By Collen Makumbirofa | Makumbirofa Farms

Let me say it plainly, because someone must:
Foreign nationals are not the sole cause of crime in South Africa. That is a lie — and a dangerous one.

Every time a community burns down a spaza shop, every time a foreign national is dragged from his home and beaten, every time a Zimbabwean, Mozambican, or Congolese person is killed on South African soil in the name of “taking our jobs” — that lie is the weapon being used. And the people wielding it know exactly what they are doing.

Crime has no passport. Violence has no nationality. And the sooner South Africa confronts that truth, the sooner real solutions can begin.

Criminals Are United. Why Aren’t the Good People?
Here is what nobody wants to say out loud: South African criminals and foreign criminals are not enemies. They are partners. They dine together. They plan together. They protect each other. They have built networks that cross borders, tribal lines, and racial divides — all in the service of lawlessness.
And meanwhile, the decent, law-abiding people — the ones who wake up early, work hard, raise their children right, and want nothing more than peace — are at each other’s throats.

Fighting over a street corner to sell vegetables.
Killing widows.
Leaving orphans without fathers.

If evil can find unity, why can’t good? This is the question that should keep every South African awake at night.

White South Africans, Black South Africans, Coloured South Africans, foreign nationals who came here seeking a better life — they are not each other’s enemies. The criminals who have hijacked communities, corrupted police stations, and terrorised neighbourhoods are the enemy. And they are laughing at the division they have engineered.

The Real Crisis: Poverty, Hunger, and a Nation Without Hope
Let us be honest about what is fuelling this fire.

South Africa is a nation under enormous pressure. Unemployment has gutted entire communities. Young men with no jobs, no income, and no prospects do not sit quietly — they explode. Not because they are inherently violent, but because desperation is its own kind of madness.

Hope is dwindling. Investors are fleeing. Violence is spreading into cities that were once considered safe. Every suburb is now installing boom gates, electric fences, armed response units — as if locking yourself inside is a substitute for solving the underlying crisis. It is not. A boom gate has never fed a hungry child or given a young man a reason to choose dignity over crime.

The scapegoating of foreign nationals is not a solution. It is a distraction. When a government cannot provide jobs, it is convenient to blame the Zimbabwean who sells airtime on the corner. When inequality becomes impossible to ignore, it is easier to blame the Malawian who works at the restaurant than to confront the systems that have kept millions in poverty for generations.

Foreign nationals are not the reason South Africa’s economy is struggling. They are, at most, a mirror held up to failures that existed long before they arrived.

Put Criminals in Jail — All of Them
The answer is not xenophobia. The answer is justice.

Put criminals in jail. South African criminals. Foreign criminals. Every person — regardless of origin — who preys on the innocent, who terrorises communities, who murders and robs and destroys. The law does not ask for your passport before it protects you. It should not ask for one before it prosecutes you either.

What South Africa needs is not walls between its people. It needs walls around its criminals.

A Prayer Request to Our Western Brothers and Sisters

To our friends, supporters, and faith communities in the West — in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, Canada, and beyond — we are appealing to you today not just as a political matter, but as a spiritual one.
Please pray for South Africa.

Pray for a nation that is polarised by poverty and torn apart by manufactured hatred. Pray for the widow who buried her husband last week and does not know how she will feed her children this week. Pray for the orphan who has no advocate. Pray for the foreign national who fled war or famine only to find violence waiting for him in a place he hoped would be safe.

Pray for the young man standing at a crossroads between crime and conscience, with nothing pulling him toward the right path.
Pray for leaders with wisdom, for communities with courage, and for a people who choose unity over division, mercy over vengeance, and truth over convenient lies.

South Africa needs God’s mercy. Not tomorrow. Now.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
— Matthew 5:9

Unite — Whites, Africans, Foreign Nationals, All Good People

This is my appeal. Not just to governments, not just to politicians — but to every good person reading these words.
Unite.

Not despite your differences, but with full knowledge of them. The tapestry of southern Africa is made of many threads — and its strength comes from being woven together, not torn apart.

The criminals who are destroying communities across South Africa are counting on your hatred of each other. They are counting on you to be too busy fighting at the traffic light to notice what they are doing in the dark.
Disappoint them.
Choose each other.
Support the Work

I am not only a writer — I am a farmer, a philanthropist, and a believer in practical solutions. Food security and job creation are not slogans for me. They are the work I wake up to every day. My farming projects in Zimbabwe and South Africa are designed to produce food, create employment, and restore dignity to communities that have been stripped of both.

If you believe in this work and want to be part of the solution:
PayPal: makumbirofac@gmail.com
Website: www.makumbirofafarms.co.za
Email: admin@makumbirofafarms.co.za

Humanity is one. Let us act like it.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

By Collen Makumbirofa
Makumbirofa Farms | www.makumbirofafarms.co.za