The Electoral Scapegoat
Turn on the news across major African capitals today, and a strikingly familiar script is playing out. From South Africa’s aggressive police operations and populist movements targeting undocumented migrants to Kenya’s sudden, high-profile directives ordering small-scale foreign traders—particularly Burundians—out of informal markets, the enforcement machinery of the state is in high gear.
The official rhetoric is polished, clinical, and framed in national interest. Official press releases speak of “restoring market order,” “safeguarding national security,” “protecting domestic informal livelihoods,” and “enforcing immigration law.”
Yet, if you look at the calendar, another common thread emerges: elections are right around the corner.
To accept the official narrative is to mistake a carefully orchestrated political strategy for routine administrative compliance. When African incumbents and political contenders turn up the heat on foreign nationals, it is rarely about immigration policy. It is about electoral survival, statecraft, and the mechanics of political distraction.
1. The Political Economy of Scapegoating
Elections are an uncomfortable moment of reckoning for ruling political elites. They bring into sharp focus structural failures that took years—or decades—to compound: crippling youth unemployment, runaway inflation, deteriorating public services, unpayable public debts, and crushing taxation.
Fixing these problems requires structural reform, immense budget allocations, fiscal discipline, and patience—none of which win elections on a tight campaign timeline. Scapegoating, by contrast, delivers instant political yields.
Deflecting Accountability: Blaming informal Burundian, Congolese, Malawian, or Zimbabwean vendors for taking “local jobs” is politically effortless compared to admitting that domestic economic policy failed to generate employment.
Creating an External Enemy to Unify a Fractured Base: Economic hardship splits a domestic electorate, driving anger toward the government. Directing that frustration toward a foreign target unites domestic voters under a protective, nationalistic banner.
The Illusion of Decisive Action: A televised police sweep through an informal market or a midnight deportation raid provides dramatic, visible proof that a government is “acting for its people,” masking years of legislative inertia.
2. An Echoing Past: The Repeating Historical Cycle
What is happening today in Nairobi or Johannesburg is not a modern anomaly; it is a continuation of a post-colonial tactic utilized across the continent whenever economic regimes begin to crumble under political pressure.
Ghana (1969)
Aliens Compliance Order
Prime Minister Kofi Busia ordered over 500,000 African non-citizens (primarily Nigerians) to leave the country within 14 days.
Severe economic stagnation following Kwame Nkrumah’s overthrow. The Busia government used mass expulsion to relieve domestic unemployment pressures.
Nigeria (1983)
“Ghana Must Go”
President Shehu Shagari issued an executive decree expelling over 1 million West African migrants (mostly Ghanaians).
A catastrophic collapse in global oil prices triggered deep economic distress. Facing an upcoming election, the government sought an immediate distraction from corruption scandals
South Africa (2008–Present)
Operation Dudula & Waves of Xenophobia
Periodic, systematic campaigns targeting African nationals in townships, accompanied by state-backed policy tightenings.
Post-apartheid economic disparity remains severe, with youth unemployment exceeding 50%. Politicians across the spectrum leverage anti-immigrant sentiment as standard campaign policy.
Kenya (2026)
Market Crackdowns & EAC Directives
Directives targeting small-scale East African traders (specifically Burundian and regional vendors) operating in urban centers.
Widespread public discontent over rising taxes, high cost of living, and unemployment ahead of electoral contests. Targeted sweeps function as a political release valve.
3. Micro-Economic Friction in the Informal Economy
Why do these campaigns find such fertile ground among ordinary citizens? Because politicians exploit a real, lived reality: the desperation of the informal sector.
In most sub-Saharan African economies, formal employment represents only a fraction of the workforce. The overwhelming majority of citizens survive within the informal economy—vending vegetables, operating barbershops, driving micro-transports, running small retail kiosks, and offering manual labor.
When purchasing power drops and fuel or food prices soar, competition within these informal spaces becomes brutal. When a foreign trader—who may work longer hours, accept thinner profit margins, or pool regional resources—sells produce slightly cheaper in a local market, existing economic anxiety instantly morphs into xenophobic resentment.
Rather than expanding the formal economy or providing credit and infrastructure to local vendors, governments step in with directives targeting foreign traders. They present the eviction of a few hundred Burundian or Zimbabwean street sellers as a “victory for local enterprise.” It is a zero-sum game that changes nothing about the fundamental structure of local poverty, but it buys votes.
4. The Grand Pan-African Paradox
These periodic crackdowns lay bare a glaring contradiction at the heart of African geopolitics: the gap between Pan-African ideals and domestic electoral reality.
At diplomatic summits, African leaders sign historic treaties. The East African Community (EAC) Free Movement Protocol guarantees the free movement of goods, labor, and rights of establishment. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is heralded as the blueprint for an integrated, borderless continent of 1.3 billion people.
Yet, these treaties share a fundamental weakness: regional bodies do not vote in domestic elections; struggling local citizens do.
When a government faces an angry electorate, diplomatic commitments to Pan-African solidarity are discarded overnight. Open borders are suddenly re-framed as “porous vulnerabilities,” and fellow Africans are re-categorized as “illegal aliens stealing national wealth.”
The Uncomfortable Reckoning: Is It Worth It?
As political leaders count the short-term ballot gains of kicking out foreign African traders, broader questions loom over the continent’s collective future. Once the deportations are complete, the market stalls emptied, and the election results declared, the fundamental issues remain: the taxes are still high, the youth are still unemployed, and the state services are still broken.
As citizens, consumers, and African neighbors, we are left to confront uncomfortable truths:
Is sacrificing Pan-African integration, regional trade, and neighborly trust worth a fleeting political victory at the ballot box?
When we cheer the eviction of a foreign street vendor, are we solving poverty, or are we simply letting our leaders off the hook for failing us?
If an African country expels its neighbors today, with what moral standing can it demand fair, humane treatment for its own diaspora abroad?
Who truly gains when working-class Africans fight each other over crumbs in the informal market, while political elites watch from above?
And ultimately: if the foreign trader leaves tomorrow and your economic misery remains unchanged, who will you be told to blame next?
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