The news from South Africa is bleak but hardly surprising. Anti-migrant protests have erupted once more, this time in Johannesburg and Pretoria, with angry crowds taking to the streets to demand the expulsion of foreign workers. The UK Home Office, in a display of reflexive concern, has issued advisories for British nationals to avoid crowds. One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from Whitehall: thank God it is not happening here. But the complacency is galling. We are witnessing the slow-motion collapse of a post-apartheid dream, and London's response is to tell its citizens to steer clear of 'crowds'. It is like watching the fall of Rome from a villa in Gaul and sending a memo to the legionaries to mind the traffic.
Let us be clear: these protests are not a spontaneous outburst of tribal rage. They are the predictable consequence of decades of failed governance, economic stagnation, and a ruling elite that has mastered the art of blaming outsiders for its own incompetence. South Africa's unemployment rate hovers around 32 per cent. Among the youth, it is over 60 per cent. In such conditions, the presence of millions of migrants – from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Somalia, and elsewhere – becomes a convenient scapegoat. The government, led by the African National Congress, has done little to integrate these newcomers or to address the structural rot that makes them a target. Instead, it offers platitudes about 'African solidarity' while the streets burn. This is the terminal phase of a once-grand liberation movement, now reduced to managing decline.
But the parallels to Britain are uncomfortable. Our own Home Office monitors the situation with a certain professional detachment, but the same tensions simmer here. The difference is that we have better institutions and a deeper reservoir of social trust. For now. The Victorian era, which I often invoke, was not a golden age of stability. It was a time of ruthless social discipline, of workhouses and empire, of a ruling class that understood that order required both coercion and consent. We have lost the latter and grown squeamish about the former. The result is a society that cannot decide whether to build walls or throw open the gates, and so does neither properly.
The anti-migrant riots in South Africa are a cautionary tale. They remind us that when the state fails to provide security and opportunity, the mob will provide its own brutal answer. The Home Office advisories are a symptom of a wider intellectual failure. We treat protests as weather events to be avoided rather than as symptoms of a deeper malaise. We have forgotten that the purpose of governance is not just to manage risk but to shape the future. The Victorians understood this. They built sewers, schools, and a civil service. They also built a national identity that could absorb waves of Irish, Jewish, and Eastern European migrants without tearing itself apart. Today, we have neither the infrastructure nor the confidence. We have only the headlines.
So let the riots in South Africa serve as a mirror. We are not so different. Our own cities are segregated by class and race, our public services are crumbling, and our political class is adrift. The only thing keeping the mob at bay is a thin crust of prosperity and a lingering memory of deference. But that crust is thinning. And when it breaks, no Home Office advisory will save us.
