OPINION: Xenophobia in South Africa’s Ivory Towers – Adekeye Adebajo

A new Business Day opinion piece by Professor and Senior Researcher (University of Pretoria) Dr Adekeye Adebajo examines the wave of Afrophobia that swept through South Africa’s higher education sector in 2026, and the troubling hostility directed at foreign academics.

The article cites data from Wits University’s African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), which recorded over 935 verified xenophobic incidents and more than 384 deaths between 1994 and 2025. It also notes that in 2025, the Human Sciences Research Council found that 42% of South Africans polled voiced outright hostility towards immigrants.

These figures are not abstract. They are the product of years of verified documentation by Xenowatch, ACMS’s open-source monitoring platform that collects, verifies, and analyses incidents of xenophobic discrimination across the country. Our work ensures that xenophobia is not treated as a series of isolated events, but as a persistent, measurable crisis. As the opinion piece makes clear, universities are not immune. When foreign academics are framed as a threat rather than a contribution, we lose sight of the cosmopolitan mission of higher education, to cross geographical, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

[Picture: SIHLE MAKU/THE TIMES]