So What’s the Drama?
South Africa has a situation. A big one. Correctional facilities are full. Hospitals are full. Schools are full. Jobs? Not so full. But highways? Packed. People are stressed. They want a system that works — one where we actually know who is in the country, who needs what, and how to plan for it. Fair enough, right?
Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, with his own take. He went on a podcast in 2024 and basically said: open the borders, let people move freely, and let’s figure it out together. Sounds nice in theory. But let’s look at what he actually said — and the parts that make you go, “Wait, hold up…”
“They Must Find Creative Ways to Come In”
Malema was asked straight up: aren’t you encouraging people to break the law? His answer?
“They must find creative ways to come into South Africa.”
Creative ways. Like… crossing rivers? Hopping fences? What exactly does that mean? He didn’t really say. Instead, he pivoted to this idea of a “non-colonial border system” — basically, borders without all the armed guards and paperwork. A referendum-style thing where you ask if someone has papers, but not to keep them out. Just to… plan better?
He said: “There needs to be a quantity of how many people require medication in Joburg. If government doesn’t have that plan, it’s going to be a disaster.”
Okay, planning is good. We love planning. But here’s the thing — how do you plan for people you don’t know are there? If someone crosses a river in the middle of the night and shows up at a hospital with no documents, no ID, no trace of where they came from… how exactly do you “plan” for that? You can’t count what you can’t see.
“We Treat Them, Then Invoice Their Country”
This is where it gets really interesting. Malema proposed a solution: “Once confirmed that this is a citizen of this particular country, these are the credentials. We treat this person and then we invoice their country.”
Sounds smart, right? Treat first, bill later. Very humanitarian. Very practical.
But wait. How?
If someone is undocumented in the first place — no passport, no ID, no paper trail — how do you confirm which country they’re from? Do you just ask nicely and hope they tell the truth? What if they say they’re from Zimbabwe but they’re actually from Somalia? Or Bangladesh? Or they genuinely don’t have documents because they fled a war zone or their country has no functioning government to issue papers?
The “invoice their country” plan assumes a level of administrative clarity that simply doesn’t exist for undocumented people. It’s like saying, “We’ll deliver the pizza, then find out who ordered it.” Great idea, but someone needs to pick up the phone first.
And let’s be real — which African government is eagerly waiting to pay hospital bills for citizens who left their country without documents? If they had that kind of system working, those citizens probably wouldn’t have left in the first place.
“They’re Not Here to Stay”
Malema made another big claim: “These are the people you say infect your account. They are not here to stay. They’re here to make the means and they go back to their homes. They’re never here to stay. They’re never here to occupy your land.”
He told a story about driving near the N1 highway to Zimbabwe and seeing people going back and forth. His point: most migrants are circular. They work, they send money home, they leave. No harm, no foul.
But here’s where the argument gets wobbly. Not every undocumented foreigner is from Zimbabwe. Some are from very far countries — Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Some crossed multiple borders, paid smugglers, risked their lives. And some? They don’t go home. They build lives here. They have children here. They open shops here. They stay for years, decades, forever.
If Malema is saying “many people go home while many are still here,” that literally means there’s a problem. It means the number of undocumented foreign nationals is beyond imaginable. It means the system isn’t tracking, isn’t counting, isn’t managing. And if the leader of a major political party is failing to comprehend the magnitude of this situation, that’s… concerning.
You can’t say “they all go home” when the evidence — full hospitals, full schools, packed highways, strained services — suggests a whole lot of them are very much staying. The math doesn’t math.
“South Africans Don’t Want Those Jobs Anyway”
Malema also tackled the jobs argument. He said migrants do work South Africans won’t do — restaurants, domestic work, shops. But then he flipped it: “They are hired by restaurants with an intention to pay very minimum wages… South Africans are not going to accept a minimum wage. They will want wages that speak to their lifestyle.”
Okay, this part actually hits. He’s saying the real problem is exploitative bosses, not migrant workers. That employers deliberately hire undocumented people because they can pay them peanuts, work them long hours, and threaten them with deportation if they complain. Remove that cheap labor pool, and bosses would have to pay South Africans properly.
He even used himself as an example: “I’ve got a restaurant around the farm and I’ve got a butcher in the township. You will not find a single foreigner… I found those skills in South Africa.”
Fair point. But here’s the counter: not every employer is Malema. Many small businesses genuinely struggle to find local workers willing to do certain jobs at certain wages. And while “pay more” sounds great, some businesses operate on margins so thin that higher wages mean closing shop. It’s complicated. There are no easy villains or easy heroes.
“The Europeans Are Doing It”
Malema’s grand finale: “You wake up in Milan and then you go to eat breakfast in Paris and have your lunch in Germany. With ease, without any paper, without talking to anyone.”
Europe’s Schengen Area! Free movement! Why can’t Africa have that?
Well… Europe built Schengen over decades, with shared databases, coordinated border controls, mutual agreements on healthcare, welfare, law enforcement, and a whole lot of money. They also have external borders that are heavily policed. You can’t just fly into Europe from anywhere and start wandering around. The “free movement” is between member states who agreed to it — not a free-for-all for the entire world.
Malema’s vision of a South African waking up, driving to Zimbabwe, pitching an idea, and becoming a citizen by sunset is beautiful. It’s poetic. But it assumes a level of institutional trust, shared systems, and administrative capacity that Africa simply doesn’t have yet. We’re not there. We’re not even close.
The Real Talk
Here’s the thing — Malema isn’t wrong about everything. He’s right that planning beats exclusion. He’s right that exploitative employers are a huge part of the problem. He’s right that African unity is a worthy goal. And he’s absolutely right that the current system is broken.
But where his argument gets shaky is in the gap between vision and reality. You can’t invoice countries for undocumented patients if you don’t know who they are. You can’t claim “they all go home” when the evidence says otherwise. You can’t compare Africa to Schengen Europe when the infrastructure, databases, and mutual agreements don’t exist.
If the number of undocumented people is so large that hospitals are full, schools are bursting, and services are collapsing — and we literally don’t know how many there are — that’s not a small problem. That’s a systemic crisis. And saying “let’s just be more African about it” doesn’t fix the plumbing.
South Africans aren’t asking for cruelty. They’re asking for control. For a system that knows who is here, what they need, and how to plan for it. They want their taxes to fund services they can actually access. They want their children to get spots in schools. They want to compete for jobs on fair terms.
Malema’s heart might be in the right place. But hearts don’t run hospitals. Systems do. And right now, the system is failing everyone — South Africans and migrants alike.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
The immigration debate in South Africa isn’t going away. It’s messy, emotional, and genuinely hard. Malema offers a bold, idealistic vision of open borders and African brotherhood. His critics — and there are many — say that vision ignores the crushing reality on the ground.
Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. We need compassion for people seeking better lives. We need planning so services don’t collapse. We need accountability for employers who exploit vulnerable workers. And we need honesty about how many people are here, where they’re from, and what they need.
What we don’t need? Simplistic slogans that sound good in podcasts but fall apart the moment you ask, “Okay, but how?”
Because “how” is the whole game. And right now, nobody — not Malema, not the government, not the opposition — has a “how” that actually works.
Your move, South Africa.
