In one of the most direct and politically charged interventions by a major African corporate leader on the continent’s migration crisis, MTN Group Chairman Mcebisi Jonas has issued a sweeping condemnation of anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa.
Jonas, the country’s former Deputy Minister of Finance, broke traditional protocols by transforming a funeral eulogy into a powerful platform for social commentary.
Speaking at the funeral service of Zimbabwean-born activist and public servant Thokozani Damasane, Jonas blamed South Africa’s rampant xenophobia squarely on “state failure” being cynically weaponised by self-serving politicians.
“The problem is the failure of the state”
In the speech’s most potent moment, Jonas dismantled the political narrative that undocumented immigrants are the root cause of the country’s economic woes.
He argued passionately that removing foreign nationals would do absolutely nothing to cure South Africa’s deep structural deficiencies.
“Foreigners can leave tomorrow — inequality will be with us,” Jonas told the congregation. “Foreigners will leave tomorrow — unemployment will be with us. Foreigners will leave tomorrow — our police will remain corrupt. Foreigners will leave tomorrow — our politicians will still be concerned with one thing: being elected and re-elected.”
He placed the crisis entirely at the doorstep of the government, stating that the breakdown of public order is an executive failure.
“The problem is the failure of the state. The state doesn’t manage immigration. It doesn’t manage its borders. It doesn’t enforce law enforcement. It doesn’t manage education. What are you expecting?” Jonas questioned, adding that when citizens “feel the burn” of poverty, they become highly vulnerable to untrustworthy politicians leading anti-migrant marches.
Tribe as a “colonial technology”
Taking his analysis deeper into history, Jonas provided a robust critique of modern identity politics and tribalism. He asserted that ethnic divisions are a lingering colonial inheritance rather than an authentic African value.
“The tribe is a product of colonial powers,” Jonas explained, highlighting how the British engineered ethnic fragmentation using the principle of indirect rule. “You have got to divide these people by psychologically enhancing the notion that one is different from the other. That’s how the notion of tribe was born.”
He warned that this divisive logic has mutated on South African streets into a toxic blend of ethno-nationalism, where persecution is increasingly driven by tribal backgrounds rather than just nationality.
He further called out modern African liberation movements for keeping tribal identities alive simply to make themselves “feel big,” demanding that such identity politics be completely banished.
A haunting prophecy recalled
Reflecting on the deteriorating economic landscape, Mcebisi Jonas recalled a chilling warning Damasane had given years prior to a young man who questioned the presence of foreign nationals in South Africa.
According to Jonas, Damasane told the youth, “Just wait fifteen or twenty years. You will also be wanting to leave your country.”
Jonas admitted to mourners that those words now ring terrifyingly loud. “As I stand up today, I look at South Africa. The level of oppression and inequality, the level of exclusion of our people, the level of corruption, the betrayal of the dream of liberation — those words of Damasane ring very loud in my ears.”
Mcebisi Jonas’ words carry commercial weight
While Jonas’s remarks were deeply moral, they carry massive commercial weight. As the head of MTN Group — a telecommunications giant headquartered in Johannesburg that operates across 19 African nations — Jonas is acutely aware of how domestic xenophobia damages South African business interests.
Past outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa (notably in 2008 and 2015) have triggered massive diplomatic friction with heavyweights like Nigeria and Ghana, resulting in severe retaliatory boycott campaigns and pressure on South African multinationals trading across the continent.
Closing his address with a call for a return to a unified “national consciousness,” Jonas reminded the nation that isolationism is an economic death sentence.
“We are a nation embedded in Africa. And without Africa, our growth as a country — economically — our fortune is intertwined with the growth of Africa. South Africa is nothing without Africa. And Africa is nothing without South Africa.”
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