WeeklySA_AdminSOUL TRUTH: Let’s cut the throat of the polite lie: No one — not a single soul — should be living in this, or any other country undocumented. Not the broke, the desperate, the hustling, or the well-heeled ghost in a Sandton penthouse. No one. To live undocumented in a sovereign nation is not a lifestyle — it’s a crisis. A festering wound.
By Themba Khumalo
There is no version of a functioning country in which people just appear, unrecorded, untracked, unaccounted for, and no one knows or cares who they are.
That is not governance. That is collapse.
Let us stop being polite about it: it is unacceptable for anyone — rich, poor, brown, white, desperate or entitled — to live in South Africa undocumented. Unacceptable. A country without proper documentation for every individual is surrendering its sovereignty.
And yet here we are, waist-deep in a slow-burning crisis, pointing fingers in all the wrong directions. So, when Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi took to the stage at the ANC’s Gauteng Lekgotla and raged against undocumented foreigners, he was half right.
But only half.
He pointed to places like the Marry Me informal settlement in Tshwane — a place where, he says, more than 65% of residents are undocumented foreigners. He called the situation “unsustainable.” He declared: “Document yourself or leave us in peace.” He insisted: “The period of honeymoon must come to an end.”
And the crowd cheered.
Because that is what rage does. It whips the crowd into comfort. It gives them a scapegoat — someone easy; someone visible; someone poorer than them.
But here is the part Premier Lesufi left out — the part they never say out loud: There are thousands — tens of thousands — of undocumented foreigners in this country who are not sleeping in shacks or selling fruit at an intersection. They are living in luxury townhouses, running cash-flush businesses, driving SUVs, and coasting through OR Tambo with expired visas and no fear in their eyes.
Undocumented. Unbothered. Untouched. And almost all of them are from Europe or the Far East.
You will never hear the so-called leaders mention them. You will never see a task force raid their neighbourhoods. You will never find their names in a policy speech or populist rant. Because our outrage is selective. And that makes it not only hypocritical — but dangerous.
See, the problem is not that Lesufi is wrong about informal settlements being overrun by undocumented people. He is not. He is right — it is a mess. It is dangerous. It is a policy failure of catastrophic proportions.
But what he refuses to confront — and what too many in this country blindly accept — is that this mess was manufactured. It was enabled. It was signed off at border posts, at Home Affairs desks, in backroom deals and handshake bribes.
Let me emphasise: The problem was not created by desperate people from our neighbouring countries — but by us. By our own leaders. By the Department of Home Affairs that auctioned off citizenship to the highest bidder. By border officials who turned fences into revolving doors. By police who collect bribes instead of enforcing laws. This was not an accident. It was engineered. It was, and still is, profitable.
And now, after decades of neglect and corruption, we are expected to believe that the tomato vendor at the corner is the threat?
Spare me.
The rot did not sneak in. It walked through the front door and got a warm welcome. And yet, the full weight of state anger is reserved for the barefoot, dark-hued bricklayer — and never the foreigner sipping imported gin on a Sandton balcony. We have turned immigration enforcement into class warfare.
If you look poor, if your accent grates, if your skin blends too easily with ours, you get hunted. You get headlines. You get evicted, beaten, and scapegoated. But if you fly in, dress well, and live in a security complex, this country will let you vanish — undocumented and undisturbed — for decades. That is not justice. That is not governance. That is cowardice dressed as policy.
And still, no one takes responsibility. No one at the Department of Home Affairs is dragged before Parliament to answer for the chaos. No police commanders are grilled for decades of complicity. No border officials are marched out for the cameras.
Instead, we get speeches. We get applause. We get the theatre of outrage — while the true architects of the crisis hide behind podiums and populism.
So yes, let us end undocumented living. But let us end all of it. In the squatter camps and the penthouses. In the taxi ranks and the golf estates. On the dusty footpaths and the business lounges.
Otherwise, let us just admit it: we do not care about the undocumented. We only care when they look like us, but poorer.
