South Africa’s immigration debate is not just about borders, law, or policy. It is about power—specifically, the power to define reality. And right now, that power sits comfortably with a class of intellectuals, experts, and commentators who speak about ordinary South Africans far more than they listen to them.
If we are serious about understanding this issue, we need to start somewhere else. We need to start with the people who live it.
Consider the personal truck driver account of a truck driver relayed to he author.
This is not a theoretical figure. This is a man who with no formal qualification, whose Code 14 drivers licence is his passport to survival and the best source of support to his family. He has watched the trucking industry change in real time. Not through academic papers or policy briefs—but through his payslip. Where a driver could once earn around R25,000 a month, wages in some parts of the industry have been driven down to nearly R12,000. That is not a small adjustment. That is a collapse.
Why?
Because in a highly competitive, cost-sensitive industry, capital will always look for cheaper labour. And here is the uncomfortable truth: desperate illegal immigrants—men willing to work under any conditions just to survive—have become part of that equation. Not because they are villains, but because they are vulnerable. They are easy to exploit.
And they are being exploited.
Employers who are under pressure to cut costs, maximize profit, and outcompete rivals are not neutral actors in this story. They actively benefit from a system where undocumented workers can be paid less, protected less, and replaced more easily. The result is a race to the bottom—one that drags down wages, conditions, and dignity for everyone in that sector, including South African workers.
This is what the truck driver sees. This is what he is trying to explain. But when he speaks, he is not treated as someone offering insight. He is treated as someone who needs correction.
This is where Antonio Gramsci’s distinction becomes not just relevant, but urgent. Gramsci spoke of “traditional intellectuals”—those who dominate formal spaces of knowledge—and “organic intellectuals,” who emerge from within the working life of society. The truck driver is an organic intellectual. His knowledge is not abstract; it is forged in experience, in risk, in survival. It is immediate, concrete, and grounded.
Yet in South Africa today, it is the traditional intellectual who sets the terms of the immigration debate. They decide what is reasonable, what is moral, and what is acceptable to say. And too often, the lived experiences of ordinary people are filtered, softened, or dismissed altogether. We are told the issue is more complex—and of course it is. We are told migrants contribute to the economy—and many do. We are told to uphold human rights—and we must.
But what we are not allowed to say, at least not without backlash, is that the current reality is also producing losers. That entire sectors of South African workers are being squeezed. That wages are falling. That competition is not happening on fair terms.
When this reality is voiced, it is quickly labeled as ignorance or xenophobia. This is not analysis. It is avoidance. To be clear: the desperation of illegal immigrants is real. Many come from conditions far worse than what they find here. They are trying to survive. That truth matters.
However, so does this one: a system that relies on their desperation to undercut local workers is not humane—it is exploitative. And it is being sustained not by the poor, but by those with economic power. If we cannot name that, then we are not having an honest conversation.
The tragedy of South Africa’s immigration debate is that it has been framed as a moral contest between compassion and cruelty. But that is a false choice. There is nothing compassionate about ignoring the economic displacement of local workers. There is nothing just about a system that pits the poor against the poorer while shielding those who profit from it.
The real divide is not between South Africans and immigrants. It is between those who live with the consequences of policy, and those who theorize about it from a distance. Until that divide is confronted, the conversation will remain incomplete.
Ordinary South Africans are not asking to be handed easy answers. They are asking to be taken seriously. They are asking for their experiences to count as evidence—not as noise. The truck driver does not need to be lectured about complexity. He is living it. What he needs is for the country to listen.
It must be acknowledged that if we continue to silence the very people most affected by these dynamics, we should not be surprised when frustration turns into anger, and anger into instability. That is not a threat. It is a pattern—one that repeats itself wherever voices are ignored for too long. It is no abstract coincidence that marches over Illegal immigrantion are drawing crowds in Durban and Johannesburg. L
South Africa does not need less debate on immigration. It needs a more honest one. One that acknowledges exploitation on all sides. One that recognizes the role of capital, not just migrants. One that refuses to sacrifice truth for comfort. And most importantly, one that restores dignity to the voices that have been pushed to the margins.
A country that cannot hear its own people cannot lead them. A debate that excludes lived realities cannot produce solutions.
Mogale Matsose II holds an honours in Political Studies and writes in his personal capacity
