SOUTH Africa is asking its Southern African Development Community (SADC) neighbours to trust its regional leadership as the bloc's annual heads-of-state summit gets under way in Durban this week.
But, Pretoria’s regional authority faces immediate strain after an anti-foreigner backlash triggered an exodus of tens of thousands of regional migrants, most of them undocumented Malawians, amid safety concerns.
Adding financial friction to the diplomatic delicate dance, the Department of Home Affairs is actively seeking to recoup R292 million spent on the repatriation of foreign nationals back to their home countries.
Home Affairs Director-General Tommy Makhode confirmed this week that formal demands for reimbursement have been dispatched to the Malawian government, alongside the embassies of Nigeria and Ethiopia.
Addressing delegates at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a lengthy apology to his SADC counterparts, declaring that South Africans were “deeply concerned and ashamed” that foreign nationals had suffered discrimination and systemic ill-treatment.
South Africa cannot “preach integration at summits and practise exclusion in the streets,” Ramaphosa cautioned.
But political analyst Professor Sipho Seepe argued that the president’s conciliatory posture exposes a fundamental erosion of South Africa's geopolitical clout across the 16-member regional bloc.
Describing Ramaphosa's address as the response of a leader who "likes to be liked," Seepe submitted that Pretoria should instead be confronting regional heads of state over the governance failures actively driving cross-border displacement.
“A proper leader would have also indicated very strongly that ‘your people are here and we do not invite them. They are here because of the pushback in your countries’,” Seepe said.
True regional integration, Seepe observed, extends beyond trade corridors to encompass political stability—a reality achievable only through unvarnished intergovernmental engagement.
“The fact that Africa is home to many immigrants has more to do with the hardships and the governance crisis that you find in those countries,” he noted, stressing that the Durban summit ought to confront state instability, political persecution, and economic stagnation rather than serve as a platform for diplomatic apologies.
While Ramaphosa has pledged to reinforce border enforcement alongside broader regional trade facilitation, Seepe countered that South Africa’s foundational challenge remains internal compliance.
“South Africa's main fault is failure to implement its own laws,” Seepe argued, pointing to chronic border porosity. “If we address our immigration system properly, we'll not be saving people who you call illegal immigrants.”
Dismissing the likelihood of substantive breakthroughs in Durban, Seepe described SADC summits as a "stuck record" where regional leaders gather to "pat themselves on the back" while issuing recycled resolutions.
“Whatever they've discussed and they're discussing, that has been something that has been said in the last eight years,” he added. “And that's all there is to it.”
The summit is also expected to draw street demonstrations across Durban, featuring anti-migrant movements alongside civil society groups protesting xenophobia and governance failures. Seepe, however, noted that civil demonstrations will yield minimal structural shift until regional electorates actively use the ballot box to enforce political accountability.