One of the more tedious habits of our age is the refusal to learn from history. We are content to watch the collapse of states through the lens of news bulletins as though they were episodes of a particularly grim serial. And so it is with the latest dispatch from the Republic of South Africa, where the British Foreign Office has felt compelled to issue a warning about a humanitarian collapse.
A humanitarian collapse, they say. The kind of language that governments use when they mean something far darker: the end of the rule of law. South Africa, once the beacon of a post-colonial dream, is now a case study in state failure, and the migrant crisis at its borders is merely a symptom of a deeper rot.
We can expect the usual platitudes from the Foreign Office, of course. Some talk of international aid, a few flags lowered, a sombre statement from the United Nations. None of this will address the underlying issue, which is that South Africa has become a hollow state.
The migrant crisis is not the disease. It is the fever. And the body of the nation is already in its death throes.
The parallels to the late Roman Empire are not merely rhetorical. When the Praetorian Guard became the real power in Rome, the empire was doomed. In South Africa, the security forces are overwhelmed, the economy is stagnant, and the political class is consumed by corruption.
The migrants are not the cause of this collapse. They are the consequence. They come because South Africa is still, relatively speaking, a functioning economy compared to its neighbours.
But that relative function is itself a mirage. The warning from the UK is not an act of concern. It is a signal that the West is beginning to understand that the South African state is no longer capable of maintaining itself.
And once that understanding becomes complete, the inevitable response will be to build a wall, not to offer aid. We have seen this before. In the 1990s, when the Balkans collapsed, the West intervened.
In the 2010s, when Syria fell apart, the West built walls. South Africa is not Syria, but the principle is the same. The migrant crisis in South Africa is a reminder that the post-colonial state is a fragile construct.
It relies on a degree of competence and shared identity that is not sustainable without constant renewal. The renewal has failed. The question now is what comes next.
Perhaps a new order will emerge from the chaos, a more stable regional power that can impose its will. Or perhaps South Africa will fragment into its constituent parts, each a smaller, poorer version of the whole. The rest of the world should watch carefully.
This is the future not just of Africa but of any society that forgets the importance of order. The British warning is a canary in the coal mine. The coal mine is the entire continent.
And we are all in it together.
