South Africa now stands at a perilous crossroads. The actions of the March and March group, joined by members of Operation Dudula, in blocking access to healthcare facilities for foreign nationals, here legally or otherwise, are not only illegal and unconstitutional, but deeply inhumane. It is a grim echo of the darkest chapters of our recent past.
For six weeks, Addington Hospital has become a frontline of unlawful gatekeeping, with self-appointed enforcers deciding who may access public healthcare. Refugees, asylum seekers, and even South Africans without identity documents have been turned away. In one case, a man was assaulted for merely seeking physiotherapy. This is not civil activism, it is vigilantism.
And yet, the police have stood by, citing vague ”agreements” and claiming orders must come from above. Their inaction, while constitutional rights are trampled at hospital gates, is an indictment on law enforcement and governance.
This dangerous precedent, with hospitals targeted today and schools and spaza shops next, is likely to escalate. We’ve seen it before. Xenophobic violence in 2008 and again in 2015 began with exactly this type of rhetoric: blaming foreigners for overwhelmed services and economic hardship.
That frustration is not unfounded. South Africans are indeed queuing for hours at overcrowded clinics and struggling to access basic services. But the cause lies not with the displaced poor of Burundi or Zimbabwe, but with a failing state, a crumbling public health system, deepening unemployment, and years of political mismanagement.
What March and March are doing is scapegoating the vulnerable while the real culprits – corruption, economic decline, and systemic neglect – go unchallenged. And the more their actions are tolerated, the more legitimised xenophobic extremism becomes.
We call on the police to immediately halt these unlawful blockades. The Constitution is clear: everyone in South Africa has the right to access healthcare. To ignore this is to forsake the very principles on which our democracy was founded, and to open the door to violence we may not be able to contain.
