Johannesburg MMC for transport Kenny Kunene has been accused of fuelling anti-migrant sentiment after making dehumanising and inflammatory remarks about undocumented migrants accused of illegal mining during a city oversight visit.
Kunene made the remarks last week while inspecting roads and public infrastructure allegedly damaged by illegal mining.
Controversial remarks spark backlash
During the visit, he used offensive language to describe undocumented migrants as rats who needed to be poisoned with Rattex and called for the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to use lethal force against them.
His remarks come as migration has become increasingly tied to arguments about crime and the decline of Johannesburg’s inner city.
The anti-immigrant group March and March has recently led protests across the country and given undocumented immigrants until 30 June to leave South Africa.
The widespread and increasing xenophobic rhetoric and incitement has led to violence in Mossel Bay in the Western Cape in recent days, which has claimed the lives of a number of people including a Tsonga-speaking South African teenager and at least two Mozambicans.
This comes after the government and the City of Joburg have stepped up inner-city enforcement operations targeting informal traders, undocumented migrants and hijacked buildings.
Concerns over rising xenophobia
There has been an increase in raids and arrests on immigrants, fuelled by comments by politicians such as Kunene and xenophobic vigilantes.
Those operations are unfolding in a city struggling with billing failures, collapsing infrastructure and weak administration.
Critics say migrants are being cast as the cause of problems shaped by poor governance, corruption, poverty and inequality.
Kunene, who is the Patriotic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, made those remarks in his official capacity as MMC for transport, but they further echo his party’s hardline position on immigration, including its Abahambe message, loosely meaning “they must go”.
Prof Tshepo Madlingozi, a commissioner responsible for antiracism, education and equality at the SA Human Rights Commission, said he would not comment directly on Kunene’s remarks because the commission could not prejudge a matter that may still come before it.
Warning against inflammatory rhetoric
But speaking more broadly, Madlingozi said SA was seeing more rhetoric “full of hatred, full of scapegoating and sometimes meant to demean”.
Madlingozi said freedom of expression was protected by the constitution, but it did not extend to propaganda for war, incitement of violence or hate speech.
“There is a responsibility for politicians to be leaders in society, to be norm-setters, to embody constitutional values but, most importantly, it’s not a favour from their side, it is an obligation that they undertook when they took an oath of office,” he said.
He said South African law made a distinction between offensive speech and hate speech.
Insulting or hurtful language did not automatically meet the threshold.
Hate speech, however, involved the advocacy of hatred against a group or individual, linked to prohibited grounds such as race, nationality, gender or sexuality, with an intention to cause harm or incite harm.
Calls for accountability grow
He said scapegoating entire groups could move beyond stereotyping and become incitement.
Claims that South Africa was being “flooded” by migrants when statistics did not support that formed part of a pattern in which disinformation could become the first step towards hate speech.
“Words matter,” he said. “The first step is often in the narrative phase before there is clear incitement to violence.”
Sharon Ekambaram, head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights, said Kunene’s remarks should be viewed seriously because they dehumanised people while calling for violence against them.
She said SA had legal mechanisms to challenge statements that spread hatred, harassment and discrimination.
But the issue was not only a legal one.
“Definitely,” Ekambaram said when asked if such remarks could meet the threshold for hate speech. That would be grounds for concern because of the dehumanising of a person, let alone hate speech. We need to call this out and take action against these reckless statements.”
She said public figures had to be held accountable when their words contributed to a climate in which migrants were blamed for SA’s social and economic crises.
Professor Loren Landau, co-director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab, said the claim that migrants are responsible for crime, unemployment and pressure on public services is not supported by evidence.
Our City News is a non-profit newsroom that serves the people of Johannesburg.
