Removing Migrants Will Not Fix a Broken Economy
South Africa’s migration debate is often framed as a question of who belongs, who does not, and who must leave.
But in this episode of CheckPoint: The Podcast, Nkepile Mabuse and Dr Pali Lehohla push the conversation into a harder space. They ask whether the anger around undocumented migrants is really about migration, or whether it is the visible symptom of an economy that has failed too many people for too long.
Lehohla’s first point is direct. The official response has come too late. In his view, South Africa delayed the deeper national conversation it should have had about the dreams of 1994, the unfinished promises of liberation, and the economic architecture needed to make democracy materially meaningful.
That delay matters because migration does not arrive in an empty room. It enters a country already shaped by unemployment, poverty, inequality, weak policy choices, broken skills systems and a public mood sharpened by local government politics.
Nkepile frames immigration as “layers of failure.” That framing becomes the spine of the conversation.
One of the most provocative layers is business. Nkepile asks why the voice of business is not more visible in the national debate. Lehohla’s answer is blunt: South African business is one of the biggest beneficiaries of intra-African trade and investment, yet it has not shown the kind of continental responsibility the moment demands.
That silence carries risk.
Nkepile names major South African companies with interests across the continent, including Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, MTN, Vodacom and Shoprite. Lehohla warns that retaliation is not difficult to imagine if the rest of the continent reads South Africa’s migration politics as hostility towards African nationals.
That is where the episode widens. It is no longer only about undocumented migrants. It becomes a question of South Africa’s place in Africa, and whether the country understands the economic consequences of how it treats people from the continent.
The conversation then turns inward.
Lehohla argues that South Africa has administered poverty instead of administering development. That phrase lands because it suggests the state has become too comfortable managing deprivation rather than building pathways out of it.
The R350 grant becomes an unexpected example. Lehohla points to the way small amounts of money can shift purchasing power and reveal the economic activity already present among poor communities. But Nkepile cuts through the optimism with a sharper observation: corporate South Africa can end up milking that spending without changing the underlying structure that keeps people poor.
This is where the migration debate becomes more complex.
South Africa still attracts migrants despite weak growth because its residual infrastructure, ports, banking system and industrial base remain stronger than many alternatives on the continent. Even damaged infrastructure can look like an opportunity when compared with places where the conditions for trade are harder.
Lehohla describes a country where the system is “fast asleep” in relation to economics, especially for black South Africans. People entering from outside find gaps in the decay and trade within them. That does not mean the decay was caused by them. It means the decay was already there.
Nkepile eventually asks the question many people are circling: what would the economy look like if undocumented migrants left?
Lehohla’s answer is the episode’s hardest truth. It would not fundamentally change.
For him, the real issue is not the presence of migrants. It is economic policy. It is business dominance. It is a failure to develop skills. It is unemployed graduates stuck without certificates while the industry says it cannot employ them. It is a country with infrastructure strong enough to rebuild, but policies too weak to turn that infrastructure into shared development.
That is the uncomfortable value of this conversation.
It does not deny the pressure communities feel. It does not pretend that undocumented migration is simple. But it refuses the neat answer that removing people will repair a broken system.
South Africa’s migration crisis is real. So is the anger around it. But if the country mistakes the symptom for the cause, it may win the politics of blame while losing the economics of repair.
The harder question is not only who must leave.
It is those who failed to build an economy where people did not have to fight over decay in the first place.
Catch up on all CheckPoint Podcast episodes here: https://www.enca.com/checkpoint-podcast-0