1994 was a watershed moment in South Africa’s painful history. It marked the point when the country decisively chose social, economic and political inclusion as the path it wished to follow.
Nelson Mandela felt a deep moral gratitude towards African nations that harboured anti-apartheid freedom fighters. But this commitment to solidarity had to be balanced with an equal commitment to protecting jobs and resources for South Africa’s newly liberated, impoverished black majority.
In a June 1994 address, he famously stated: “When the history of our struggle is written, it will tell a glorious tale of African solidarity... Africa shed her blood... so that all her children could be free.”
The freedom to live and study in South Africa is now in question.
The Refugees Act 130 of 1998 sets out the rights and obligations of asylum seekers and refugees. Its implementation, however, has been dismal, plagued by administrative, procedural and infrastructural capacity barriers.
The result is that people are unduly punished for irregular entry or missing transit deadlines. Importantly, this directly violates the core principle of non-refoulement, a point the Constitutional Court recently confirmed. The Department of Home Affairs had to comply and accept applications from anyone expressing an intention to seek asylum. Within days, the department was overwhelmed with applications, sparking violent protests by anti-immigrant groups in Durban and Soweto.
There is something profoundly disturbing about a society that fought to dismantle racial exclusion but is now witnessing children being confronted at school gates because they are considered foreigners. We need to be clear that the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to basic education. It does not restrict this right to South African citizens.
A child’s entitlement to education should not be compromised because the child or their parents lack South African citizenship. The courts have repeatedly said that a lack of papers cannot close the school door.
The protests involving the March and March movement at Addington Primary School in Durban in January 2026 exposed more than tensions over school admissions. They raised a fundamental question about the moral direction of South Africa’s democracy: whether a child’s nationality can serve as grounds for questioning their right to learn.
The protesters claimed that foreign children were being prioritised over South African learners. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education disputed those allegations. Sadly, the spectacle of anti-migrant mobilisation outside a primary school had already delivered its unsavoury message: if you are a migrant child, you are not welcome here! For migrant families, even the ordinary act of taking a child to school could become a confrontation over whether they belonged.
Organically formed civil society movements, such as March and March, are important grassroots organisations in new democracies, especially when they raise socioeconomic grievances such as unemployment, poverty, inequality and government failure. They, however, traverse a rather slippery slope when these grievances translate into collective interventionist action organised around citizenship, sovereignty, immigration enforcement and exclusionary nationalism.
As such, they have to take full responsibility for divisive and provocative messaging and incitement, especially in light of human rights organisations’ warnings about violations of basic human rights. Arguably, the more serious concern is that expedient political parties may opportunistically use the movement to further their own ends and create chaos in the run-up to the November elections.
It is rather unfortunate that political grievances over the ruling party’s underperformance in delivering dignity to the country’s poor, coupled with dissatisfaction with the Department of Education, have become triggers for unacceptable xenophobic violence. South African parents are entitled to expect functioning schools and fair admission processes. It is incorrect, however, to blame high unemployment, poverty, deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate public services on migrants. What is of concern is that civil grievances are manifesting as open hostility towards migrant children.
Amid the political rhetoric, administrative disputes and competing claims about immigration, the plight of migrant children remains conspicuously absent from the debate. These children did not determine the circumstances of their migration. They did not negotiate immigration policies, choose the conditions of their displacement or create the administrative systems that now determine their legal status. They do, however, suffer the consequences when immigration uncertainty disrupts their education.
When migrant children become scapegoats and targets of public frustration, responsibility shifts away from those who govern and towards those with the least political power. In simple terms, immigrant Zimbabwean and Malawian parents and their children did not create overcrowded classrooms, nor did they design South Africa’s dysfunctional educational and Home Affairs administrative systems.
Consider the experience of a child who witnesses adults protesting outside their school, questioning whether children of their nationality should be admitted. What does that child understand about their place in South African society? This has implications for their return to class, knowing that their presence has become a public controversy.
Education depends on safety, confidence, relationships and a sense of belonging. Children who experience hostility because of their nationality may learn an entirely different lesson from the one their teachers intend: that their humanity is conditional.
We need to reflect on the distinction between being permitted to attend school and being genuinely welcomed into its community.
The awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay presents an extraordinary moment of national pride, but also an uncomfortable moral reckoning amid the current immigration debacle. Pillay’s Nobel Prize should provoke serious reflection on the distance between South Africa’s international reputation as a defender of human rights and the everyday experiences of vulnerable people within its borders.
What does it mean to celebrate a Nobel Peace Prize awarded for defending humanity while children at our own school gates must still contend with hostility because of their nationality?
Professor Suriamurthee Maistry is a decolonial and critical curriculum Scholar in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or post.co.za