Richard Adeolu Adejumobi

South Africa’s crisis is not that crime exists among migrants. Crime exists in every society. The crisis is that individual criminality has become the basis for collective guilt. A cult killing becomes evidence against millions of Nigerians. A drug arrest becomes proof that African migrants are the architects of national decline. Between isolated crimes and nationwide hostility lies a powerful political machinery that transforms fear into narrative, narrative into policy, and policy into exclusion. Unless South Africa learns to distinguish justice from scapegoating, it risks fighting crime by criminalizing an entire people.