PRETORIA-(MaraviPost)-In 2026, a new wave of anti-Black xenophobia is unfolding on two continents at once.
On one side is the United States, under a hardened immigration posture under the administration of Donald J. Trump.
On the other is South Africa, racing toward a June 30 deadline that could force thousands of Black African migrants out of the country.
What makes this moment different is not just the scale of the campaigns.
It is the history both countries are now contradicting.
At the United Nations, the world has spent more than two decades building a legal and moral framework to fight xenophobia.
Security Council Resolution 2686 in 2023 marked a turning point, with the Council unanimously declaring that xenophobia and hate speech can fuel war.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has kept that pressure alive through annual follow-ups to the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
That declaration was born in South Africa itself, after the World Conference Against Racism in Durban.
African countries backed it wholesale, and Pretoria claimed the role of global advocate against racial exclusion.
The text is blunt: it “recognizes with deep concern the ongoing manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, including violence.”
It also obliges states to remove the barriers that make certain groups targets of exclusion.
Later UNGA texts have added urgency, warning “with alarm” about rising racist incitement and the role of digital platforms in spreading it.
The UN’s “Together” campaign tries to give that policy a human face, focusing on refugees and migrants, including Black Africans.
But policy and practice are diverging in 2026.
In Washington, the United States’ self-portrayal as a global champion of democratic values is colliding with a restrictive immigration stance that critics say falls hardest on Black migrants.
Unlike South Africa, the United States has never fully embraced the anti-xenophobia framework that emerged from Durban.
The U.S. voted against the Durban III process and boycotted commemorations, with Israel at its side.
In Pretoria, the contradiction is even starker.
South Africa is the host of Durban and the architect of many of the UN’s anti-xenophobia resolutions.
Yet it is now the site of a coordinated campaign to push undocumented foreigners out by June 30.
The campaign is being driven by groups like March & March and Operation Dudula.
Operation Dudula’s leader told CNN the date is fixed, adding: “I can’t control the people of South Africa” after June 30.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has tried to slow the momentum, telling traditional leaders that “migration is not the cause of our problems.”
Police have promised “no tolerance for xenophobic or any type of violence.”
But on the ground, fear is already reshaping lives.
South Africa’s Border Management Authority says more than 13,000 people, including about 9,000 Malawians and 3,000 Zimbabweans, have been repatriated or deported in a recent two-week period.
Migrants describe evictions, denial of healthcare, and assaults.
Some have sought refuge in churches, police stations, or remote areas to avoid attack.
The irony runs deeper when you look back to apartheid.
Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia sheltered South African dissidents, even as the apartheid South African government bombed countries it deemed to be holding those dissidents.
Those countries absorbed risk to protect Black South Africans.
Now, some of their citizens face expulsion from the same country they once sheltered.
Outside Africa, the response is already building.
According to participants in a recent Zoom meeting, the Malawian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada is mobilizing to protect Malawians in South Africa.
The plan was announced at a farewell for Malawi’s Ambassador to the U.S. and Canada, Justice Chombo.
The groups say they are arranging legal aid, emergency relief, and advocacy before June 30.
That diaspora action highlights a gap.
Where international norms are not stopping harm, communities are stepping in themselves.
When Washington maintains exclusionary policies and Pretoria moves toward mass expulsions, both undercut the Durban framework that South Africa helped create.
For African governments that supported Durban in 2001, the optics are difficult: a founding voice is now targeting African migrants at home.
The human cost is immediate.
Displacement, lost income, closed clinics, and rising violence are already visible.
If the UN’s resolutions are to matter beyond paper, Member States will have to match the speed and urgency of the Malawian diaspora.
Otherwise, June 30, 2026 will enter the record not as a security operation, but as a date when two democracies walked away from the principles they once claimed to lead.
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