- South Africans honour Salif Keita’s legacy but believe his recent remarks were shaped by an incomplete picture of events.
- Lawful protests against illegal immigration and government failure should not be conflated with xenophobia.
- Rather than cancelling South Africa, Keita is invited to meet township communities, hear their experiences, and see both sides of the crisis.
Dear Salif, Papa Salif
We write to you with love, with deep respect, and with pain. For more than 50 years, you have been the Golden Voice of Africa. You sang for Mandela when it was dangerous to sing for Mandela. You have given Mali and Africa dignity when the world called us albinos and outcasts. You are not just an artist to us; you are a brother and an elder.
That is why your statement, “I Close the Door on Hate, Not on the People,” has hurt us so much. And that is why we must respectfully tell you that you have been misled.
You have been misled by nefarious and non-objective reports that portray what is happening in South Africa as simple xenophobia. It is not. To call it that is to insult ordinary South Africans who are still suffering 33 years after democracy.
Distinguishing xenophobia from anti-illegality protests
Salif, we have to make a distinction that international media, especially African parachute journalism, refuses to make. There is xenophobia, which we condemn unequivocally. And there is a legitimate, lawful protest against illegal immigration and lawlessness, which is what you are seeing now.
No South African in his right mind hates Africans. We are Africans ourselves. Our homes are full of Malawians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Basotho who came legally, who work, and who are our neighbours, comrades and family. My own cousin is married to a Zimbabwean. We live together.
What South Africans are marching against is not legal migrants. They are marching against illegal migration, undocumented criminality and the complete collapse of border control. The anti-illegal migration marches you have seen on television by Operation Dudula, March and March, and various community forums are not designed to attack fellow Africans. They are intended to restore law and order in the face of government failure.
For more than 20 years, our government has failed to secure the border. It has failed to issue proper visas, deport criminals and stop human trafficking. When the state fails, the people take to the streets. That is not hate. That is desperation.
Why South Africans say the border crisis is real
You said you see people looking for work, safety and dignity. You are right; many are. But you must also see what ordinary South Africans see in Diepsloot, Hillbrow, Isipingo and Marabastad.
We see porous borders. The fences between South Africa and Mozambique, and Zimbabwe and Lesotho were cut years ago and never repaired. People cross with goods, drugs, guns and children. The army and police on both sides are corrupt and allow the system to fall apart. A R1,500 or less bribe (sic) at Beitbridge will get a truckload through. This is not a secret. Even our own Border Management Authority has acknowledged the problem.
We see hijacked buildings in Johannesburg where 30 people sleep in a single room, controlled by criminal syndicates and protected by corrupt local police. We saw 77 people burn to death in the Usindiso building because of this reality.
We see spaza shops selling expired food and poisonous products to our children, operated by people with no papers, no health certificates and no tax compliance, while South African shop owners who follow the law go bankrupt.
We see clinics collapsing because they are serving populations far beyond what they were built for, without any meaningful increase in funding. Is it xenophobic to ask for documents? Is it hateful to demand law and order?
If a Malian entered South Africa illegally, occupied a building and sold fake medicine to South African children, would the Malian government remain silent in the name of African unity? Of course not. Peace requires clear boundaries and functioning laws.
The real crisis is failed African leadership
This is the deeper issue you must examine, brother. This crisis is not uniquely South African. It is African. It is the consequence of failed political leadership and poor governance across the continent.
Why are millions of young Africans leaving their countries in the first place? Why is a young man from your beloved Mali, from Zimbabwe, Malawi or the Democratic Republic of Congo risking his life to cross the Limpopo?
Because his own government has failed him. Because there are no jobs. Because corruption has hollowed out opportunity. Because conflict continues to destroy lives. Because too many African leaders steal elections, steal resources and ultimately drive their own youth into exile. Yet those same leaders have the luxury of calling South Africans xenophobic from comfortable offices in Addis Ababa.
The African Union, SADC and ECOWAS have never convened a meaningful summit asking why Africans are fleeing their own countries or how to create conditions for them to stay. Instead, South Africa is expected to carry the burden of the continent’s failures, and ordinary South Africans are shamed whenever they say that burden has become unbearable.
That is not honesty. African unity cannot mean that South Africa must collapse so that Africa can feel united. You know this, Salif. You have criticised leaders in Mali for corruption. You know that governance matters.
Come and listen before you boycott
You said: “If there is a stage in a township, I will sing there. If a community needs to be heard, I will listen.”
We invite you to do exactly that. But do not cancel first and listen later. Listen first. You are welcome to engage in frank discussions with people who understand the background of this crisis, including activists such as Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and community leaders in Alexandra, Soweto, Durban and Cape Town who are leading these marches.
Not politicians; ordinary mothers who have buried children after they ate poisoned snacks, workers who lost jobs because employers preferred cheap undocumented labour, and families who have lived through robbery and violence in their own homes.
Sit with them. They will not show you hatred. They will show you communities where South Africans and legal migrants live side by side, both suffering because illegal criminal networks control housing, electricity and basic services.
You sang at Wembley in 1988 for Mandela because apartheid was our shared struggle. Today, our shared struggle is against corrupt African elites who have betrayed Mandela’s dream of a functional, law-governed Africa.
Boycotting South Africa punishes the wrong people. It punishes ordinary South Africans who still live in poverty, who still have no jobs, and who still struggle for clean water and decent healthcare 33 years after democracy. It tells them that their pain matters less than everyone else’s.
African unity should never come at the expense of helpless ordinary South Africans. We deserve to be treated as a priority in our own country.
We remain grateful for the support Africa gave us during the liberation struggle. But we must also remember that the real fight was fought inside this country by ordinary people who sacrificed everything.
Keep the door open
Dear brother, you said, “I am closing the door on violence.” We challenge and respectfully ask you not to close the door on dialogue.
Violence is wrong. If any South African attacks a fellow African simply because of nationality, we condemn it alongside you, and those responsible must be arrested. But demanding documents, demanding law and order, and demanding that our government secure the border is not violence. It is citizenship.
We love you. We need your voice here, not away from here. Come and sing on that township stage. But also march with the mothers who want clean spaza shops. Come and encourage illegal immigrants to return home and obtain proper documentation. Come and witness both sides of the story.
Do not allow nefarious NGOs and sensationalist international media, who have never lived in a township, to define who we are. Do not rely on journalists who spend less than two days in South Africa before claiming to understand our communities.
We are not xenophobic. We are exhausted. We are a people who opened our arms to the continent after 1994, and now our arms are tired because our own state has left us carrying a burden that should be shared by 54 African nations.
Your music taught us that difference is not disdain. Please do not disdain our struggle for law and order.
With Love and Ubuntu,
Your Brothers and Sisters in South Africa
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