From Soweto to Sahara, we must all draw a red line against billionaires, oligarchs and the ruling elite
Groups such as March and March and Operation Dudula have issued a June 30th ultimatum for African immigrants living in South Africa to leave the country accusing them of ‘stealing’ their jobs and committing crimes. However, their anger is misdirected. The challenges they are experiencing are symptoms of a deeply unequal and rigged economic system.
By Daud Kayisi
Some South Africans are pouring into the streets, furious at unemployment levels, collapsing public services, and rising crime. Their anger is justified. But dangerously misdirected. African immigrants are not their enemy. They are their fellow comrades trying to survive the very system choking them.
The real culprits South Africans and Africa must unite against are billionaires, corporations and ruling elites, the 1%, who hoard wealth while we, the 99%, suffer.
South Africa stands as the frontline of global inequality. The superrich have connived with the ruling elite and rigged the economic system to work against Africans while enriching themselves. The richest 10% hoard nearly all the nation’s wealth while the majority remain in the periphery. The skewed economic system in the country dictates who works, who owns, and who thrives. Townships remain cut off, workers remain disposable, and communities remain trapped in poverty while wealth piles up in the hands of a few.
While context differs, the pattern is the same across the continent.
Africa is immensely endowed with minerals, young and vibrant population, fertile agricultural land, vast forests, and boundless energy, agriculture and tourism opportunities. Yet hunger, energy poverty, poor public service delivery and instability still persist.
The question is not how can a rich continent be so poor, hungry and unstable. It is who orchestrates instability, controls its wealth and ensures Africans are excluded from it?
Debt is pulling the continent down
Africa is in debt distress. The continent’s total public debt is estimated to be approximately $1.83 trillion with 32 out of the 55 countries spending more in repaying debt interests than allocation towards healthcare and education combined. And this debt accumulation isn’t simply about governments “failing” to manage their finances. It is a predictable outcome of a global economic architecture designed to keep the continent in a cycle of dependency.
The logic is deliberate: Governments are made accountable to international creditors rather than citizens; structural adjustment programs shrink public spending and weaken domestic industries; economies are locked into reliance on imports and external capital.
In other words, debt distress isn’t a symptom of mismanagement; it is the architecture itself that benefits the 1% financial elites, multinational corporations, and creditor nations leaving the continent with economic and social instability, poverty, and exclusion from its own wealth.
It is our politicians betraying us
Political capture in Africa hardwires inequality into governance. Elites bend laws, budgets, and institutions to serve their interests, diverting public resources into patronage networks while silencing grassroots voices, weakening accountability, and locking citizens out of decision‑making.
Instead of redistributing wealth or investing in schools, hospitals, and public infrastructure, captured states entrench privilege, borrow to sustain patronage, and deepen dependency to ensure that poverty spreads downward while wealth flows upward.
Corporate-controlled food systems and climate change
Agriculture is Africa’s lifeline, but its control has been hijacked. The fundamentals — land, seeds, markets, and food systems — are not in the hands of ordinary Africans. They are locked in the grip of greedy and corrupt corporations and elites.
Corporate agribusinesses like Bayer, Syngenta, and Corteva dictate seed access, pricing and heavily promote use of toxic chemicals poisoning rivers, soils and causing underlying health effects in people. They masquerade behind modernising and commercialising agriculture to displace smallholder farming families and trap them in perpetual hunger and poverty.
Trade and agriculture policies are written for profit while climate change relentlessly batters small‑scale, rain‑fed farmers. As a result, food sovereignty in Africa has been destroyed. And food security is denied.
The continent is so rich but very poor
Across Africa, countries sit on vast reserves of oil, gas, and minerals, yet they face economic stagnation, political turmoil, and grinding poverty. This paradox is not a coincidence, nor merely the failure of governments to seize opportunities. It is the very outcome of a rigged global economic system, one designed to extract Africa’s wealth while leaving its people trapped in instability and want.
Africa holds 30% of the world’s critical minerals that are continuously being shipped overseas as raw exports. This is extraction without transformation that is harming the continent. We must break free from the chains of raw export. Africa can turn its strategic resources into jobs, revenue, and true industrial power. This is not just economics, it is liberation.
The South Africa crisis must therefore be redefined. It is not an immigration crisis. It is an economic one. And it is not South Africa’s alone. It is an Africa‑wide challenge forcing millions to move across borders in search of survival.
We must not turn on each other. Expelling one another only reshuffles the victims of exploitation. The fight is not against fellow Africans; it is against the architecture of greed. Our energy must be united in building a new economic system to replace the broken one.
*Daud Kayisi is Fight Inequality Alliance Global Media and Communications Officer