Senior African political leaders, diplomats, lawyers and researchers have launched a coordinated pushback against South Africa's increasingly hardline migration narrative, arguing that migrants are being scapegoated for governance failures while coordinated online disinformation is inflaming anti-foreigner sentiment.

The intervention, led by the Beijing+30 African Women's Movement, comes in the wake of recent anti-migrant mobilisation and amid growing concern that South Africa's migration debate is being shaped more by misinformation and political rhetoric than evidence.

Chairperson Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the movement convened the high-level discussion because South Africa had reached "a deeply concerning moment", where migration was increasingly being weaponised in public discourse while constitutional values, the rule of law and Pan-African solidarity were being undermined.

"This is not a once-off discussion," Fraser-Moleketi said. "It marks the beginning of a broader process of public engagement, policy advocacy and regional dialogue on migration."

She said the movement would engage the South African government, the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and civil society on recommendations emerging from the discussions, with the aim of promoting evidence-based migration governance and countering harmful narratives around migration.

Among those participating were former African Union Commission chairperson Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former Economic Community of West African States executive secretary Prof Adebayo Olukoshi, Mozambique's ambassador to South Africa Maria Gustava, Section27 attorney Faatima Laher and digital peacebuilding specialist Jenna-Lee Strugnell.

The webinar's strongest empirical evidence came from Strugnell, whose research examined the online ecosystem surrounding the recent anti-migrant mobilisation.

Using social media listening tools, her analysis found that 27% of online conversations about foreign nationals originated from coordinated disruptor and bot accounts, before being amplified by ordinary social media users.

Her research also found that spikes in online anger and hate speech closely preceded incidents of offline violence.

"There are genuine grievances around unemployment and exclusion," Strugnell said. "But coordinated disinformation networks are exploiting those grievances for political and geopolitical gain."

She warned that anti-migrant rhetoric formed part of a broader pattern of coordinated online manipulation and urged African institutions to strengthen digital resilience against disinformation campaigns.

Strugnell also presented research showing that simple interventions encouraging users to question whether online claims were accurate reduced the spread of misinformation by as much as 82%.

The findings reinforced a central theme running through the discussion: that migrants were increasingly being blamed for structural failures rooted in unemployment, poverty, corruption and poor governance.

Olukoshi argued that growing inequality and exclusion had created fertile ground for political scapegoating.

"The social contract has to be rebuilt," he said, warning that societies which normalise hostility towards foreigners ultimately turn that hostility against their own citizens.

He criticised political leaders for following public anger rather than leading it, citing Ghana's handling of anti-Nigerian tensions as an example of decisive political leadership preventing violence.

Dlamini-Zuma argued that immigration enforcement remained the responsibility of the state and warned against allowing ordinary citizens to police migration.

"No citizen should be asking another person for documents," she said, cautioning that vigilante enforcement risked escalating into broader ethnic conflict.

She also warned against political parties using migration as an election issue instead of addressing unemployment, poverty and economic exclusion.

Laher said South Africa already possessed a strong constitutional and legislative framework protecting migrants and refugees but implementation remained inconsistent.

"The gap is not in the law. The gap is in implementation," she said.

Drawing on Section27's monitoring during the June protests, Laher described overcrowded holding cells, unlawful detention beyond prescribed time limits and allegations of corruption within detention processes.

She also challenged several claims underpinning anti-migrant rhetoric, noting that only 1.8% of learners in South African schools are foreign nationals, while corruption and irregular expenditure cost the state significantly more than services provided to migrants.

Mozambique's ambassador to South Africa, Maria Gustava, highlighted the disproportionate impact of anti-migrant violence on women and children, saying migrant women faced heightened risks of gender-based violence, economic exclusion and displacement.

She recounted the case of a heavily pregnant Mozambican woman who fled attacks and gave birth in the bathroom of the Mozambican High Commission after being evacuated by police.

Fraser-Moleketi said migration had become a convenient distraction from governance failures.

"It is profoundly dishonest to point fingers at pregnant women seeking healthcare or children seeking education while billions are being lost through corruption," she said, referring to the Tembisa Hospital corruption scandal.

She also challenged perceptions that migrants were merely a burden on the economy, citing OECD and International Labour Organization estimates that immigrants contribute about 9% of South Africa's gross domestic product.

Fraser-Moleketi said the movement's intervention was intended to shift the migration debate away from political rhetoric and towards evidence, constitutional rights and government accountability.

Whether it succeeds remains to be seen. But the initiative marks one of the clearest organised attempts yet by senior African political figures, diplomats and civil society leaders to challenge the narrative that migrants — rather than governance failures — lie at the heart of South Africa's social and economic crises, while laying the groundwork for continued engagement with governments and regional institutions.