AFIAfrican Feminist Initiative

June 2026

“a book knows its place in the library
but I have no address in this wide world.”

—Epiphanie Mukasano, 2010

 

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”

—Warsan Shire, 2015

 

We are a collective of artists, writers, scholars, teachers, activists and community members brought together by our commitment to African feminism. Precisely because of this, we abhor and reject any attempt to divide us and instill hatred and violence against our fellow African friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbours and loved ones. 

We stand with our friends, colleagues, family, neighbours and loved ones suddenly labeled “foreign” and “undocumented” and with those in South Africa who reject the latest xenophobic and Afrophobic acts of violence. We stand with all those who have been victimized and been made to feel unsafe and unwelcome. 

We note that some sectors in South Africa are deliberately exploiting and inflaming such rhetoric and violence. The consequences for members of our communities who are called “foreign” or “undocumented”  are catastrophic. Yet we know from the long, vital and loving connections sustained over the decades - that literally kept South Africans alive and played a central role in our struggle for freedom - that our real communities cross the divisions created by passports and borders. 

We call on all South Africans, Africans and especially those in positions of leadership to refuse, reject and take action to stop all xenophobic actions and rhetoric. For those in the academy, our voice and actions can also reassure our students and others who suddenly find themselves labeled “foreign" and “undocumented,” sometimes by those who themselves a generation ago would have been called the same. Of course, labeling people as “other” is a violent way to claim a sense of legitimacy and belonging. 

South Africa has always been infused with and strengthened by our connections with people across our borders. We in the African feminist community live this reality each day. Let us stand up for that reality and refuse the one created by malicious forces who are deliberately fomenting and exploiting divisions between us.

 

“no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well.”

—Warsan Shire, 2009

 

“Dispossessed
Is not the same as empty

 

I was born into extraction
I still choose creation

 

The atoms of this body remember abundance
I receive
because I am part of the making”

— Lebo Mashile, We Are Not Waiting, 2026

 

This statement has received endorsement from various members of the AFI, academics in the South African diaspora, English departments at University of the Western Cape, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town, as well as the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, the Wits Department of Political Studies, the Palestine Solidarity Coalition at the University of the Western Cape (PSCUWC), the SARChI Chair in African Feminist Imagination, SARChI Chair in Gender Politics at Stellenbosch University and the Institute for Creative Art at the University of Cape Town

Moreover, it  forms part of the growing number of voices against Afrophobia/ xenophobia inside and outside the academy. For example, the collection of essays in “Go home or die here: Violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in South Africa” (2008) that examines how xenophobic violence against African migrants in South Africa emerged from social, economic, and political tensions. More recently, insights from on-the-ground reporting by journalists like Fred Khumalo and Zubeida Jaffer. Fred’s experiences in Mphumalanga and Ixopo, KwaZulu Natal show explosive and intimate threats against neighbours, while Zubeida reports that no more than 50 people gathered for March on March, with no one from her neighbourhood of Wynberg in the Western Cape. Additional efforts include but are not limited to: 

1. Latest Anti-Xenophobia Campaign
2. The Economic Freedom Fighters consistency on the non-negotiability of Pan Africanism and multiple leaders speak out against Afrophobia all the time — hundreds of videos of this, but minimal news coverage of the anti-March on March marches by local EFF in different cities
3. AIDC Statement on the rising tide of Afrophobia and Xenophobia in South Africa
4. Abahlali BaseMjondolo, the nationwide mass-based shack dwellers movement,(and in other provinces also the UPM -Unemployed People's Movement) have been intervening in word and with their bodies en masse for years. And, in this outbreak months before anyone was noting there is an outbreak, they and Congolese Solidarity Movement in Durban were putting their bodies on the line, as they always have for any attacks on the poor. This clip shows the aftermath of Abahlali and their allies successfully ending a xenophobic march. Abahlali have had several marches too and in all their anti-PIE Act (including the one a few days ago in Joburg) marches have repeatedly centred their rejection of anti-poor and anti-African violence and rhetoric. See their response statement.