03/06/2026
STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE’S FORUM (NUPF)
A COMPREHENSIVE CONDEMNATION OF XENOPHOBIA, MASS UNEMPLOYMENT, CORPORATE EXPLOITATION AND STATE FAILURE
The National Unemployed People’s Forum (NUPF) strongly and unequivocally condemns xenophobia, violence against immigrants, destruction of livelihoods, and all reactionary attempts to redirect the legitimate anger of the unemployed masses toward fellow poor and working-class people.
We reject, without ambiguity, the dangerous falsehood that immigrants are the primary cause of unemployment, poverty, crime, collapsing public services, or the worsening social conditions confronting the people of South Africa.
This narrative is not only politically dishonest — it is materially false, economically misleading, and socially dangerous.
South Africa stands today among the countries with the highest unemployment rates in the world. Official labour force data continue to show a crisis of historic proportions, with the expanded unemployment rate remaining above 40%, while youth unemployment remains devastatingly high, leaving millions of young people excluded from productive economic participation. Entire communities have been condemned to permanent poverty, hopelessness, social decay, and dependence without any serious programme of economic reconstruction. South Africa faces structural unemployment rooted in deindustrialisation, weak economic growth, and persistent inequality.
The first contradiction that must be confronted honestly is this:
If immigrants are responsible for unemployment, then why has unemployment continued to worsen over decades under the stewardship of governments with full control over economic policy, state institutions, budgeting, labour regulation, education, infrastructure, and public investment?
Immigrants neither control fiscal policy, nor industrial policy, nor land distribution, nor national infrastructure spending, nor state procurement, nor economic planning.
The reality is simple:
The unemployed have been persuaded to fight symptoms while the causes remain untouched.
The government remains the largest employer and the single institution with the greatest constitutional and material responsibility to create the conditions for employment. It possesses the instruments to drive industrialisation, build infrastructure, expand productive sectors, finance public works programmes, strengthen manufacturing, improve vocational training, and transform land ownership for productive purposes.
Yet instead of a decisive programme for economic transformation, millions have witnessed:
Continued deindustrialisation and factory closures;
Dependence on imported goods that could be produced locally;
Weak support for labour-intensive industries;
Land remaining concentrated and underutilised;
Informal settlements growing while housing delivery stagnates;
Young people graduating into permanent unemployment;
Municipal collapse and deteriorating public infrastructure.
Under such conditions, frustration becomes inevitable. But frustration without political clarity becomes dangerous.
The unemployed masses must ask:
Why are township streets burning while boardrooms remain untouched? Why are poor people hunted while those responsible for economic exclusion continue uninterrupted?
The second contradiction lies in the conduct of multinational corporations and sections of domestic capital.
The National Unemployed People’s Forum condemns corporations that exploit divisions among the poor for profit.
In many sectors — including agriculture, hospitality, construction, logistics, domestic work, retail, and informal production — some employers deliberately take advantage of vulnerable migrant labour conditions to suppress wages and undermine labour standards. This occurs not because migrants are the problem, but because profit-driven corporations deliberately seek the cheapest labour possible, often exploiting desperation among both locals and migrants.
A capitalist employer driven solely by profit does not ask:
“How do we uplift society?”
The employer asks:
“How do we reduce labour costs and maximise profit?”
If migrant workers are exploited for poverty wages, the problem is not the migrant worker trying to survive — the problem is the exploitative employer who benefits from labour vulnerability while escaping accountability.
The unemployed South African and exploited migrant worker are often victims of the same economic structure.
To attack the migrant while leaving exploitative corporations untouched is to fight the victim while protecting the beneficiary.
This is the contradiction that must be politically exposed.
The third contradiction concerns what increasingly appears to be a systematic redirection of social anger.
The National Unemployed People’s Forum raises serious concern regarding the growing tendency to redirect mass frustration away from structural causes of poverty and unemployment and toward immigrants.
Whether through irresponsible political rhetoric, organised criminal opportunism, misinformation, scapegoating, or other divisive agendas, the practical effect has been the same:
The unemployed fight each other while the system producing unemployment remains intact.
When unemployed South Africans are mobilised to fight immigrants instead of demanding:
factories,
industrial policy,
land redistribution for production,
decent housing,
mass public employment,
infrastructure development,
quality education linked to production, and
democratic economic planning,
then society must ask difficult questions about who benefits from such displacement of anger.
A divided poor majority is easier to control than an organised unemployed movement demanding structural transformation.
The answer to unemployment will never emerge from violence against migrants.
One immigrant operating a spaza shop did not collapse manufacturing.
One migrant worker did not privatise productive capacity.
One undocumented worker did not dismantle rail infrastructure.
One refugee did not create load shedding, corruption, deindustrialisation, or economic stagnation.
The enemy of the unemployed cannot be the person sleeping hungry beside them.
The real crisis confronting South Africa is systemic:
an economy incapable of absorbing labour,
growing inequality,
weak industrial capacity,
concentrated ownership of wealth,
persistent landlessness,
exploitation by capital, and
political failure to implement decisive transformation.
The National Unemployed People’s Forum therefore calls on unemployed South Africans to redirect their anger toward organised democratic struggle for:
1. Nationalisation of land for productive use, housing, and agrarian development.
2. Mass industrialisation to rebuild domestic productive capacity and reduce import dependency.
3. Large-scale state-led employment programmes.
4. Decent housing and infrastructure for poor communities.
5. Strong labour protections against exploitation of both local and migrant workers.
6. Accountability from multinational corporations profiting from labour precarity.
7. An economy organised around human need rather than profit accumulation.
The unemployed of South Africa must reject xenophobia because xenophobia does not create jobs.
It does not build factories.
It does not return land.
It does not industrialise the economy.
It does not build houses.
It does not defeat poverty.
It only deepens suffering among the oppressed while those benefiting from inequality remain untouched.
The unemployed masses must refuse to become instruments in a struggle against fellow victims of exploitation while the true beneficiaries of poverty continue to rule uninterrupted.
The struggle of the unemployed must not be against immigrants — it must be against unemployment itself, against exploitation, against poverty, and against an economic system that abandons millions while protecting privilege and profit.
Issued by:
National Unemployed People's Forum
